| CNN | - |
Washington
(CNN) -- After weeks of talking past each other, congressional leaders
and President Barack Obama talked to each other Wednesday evening --
only to emerge evidently no closer to a deal to halt the government's
budget stalemate.
No end in sight to government shutdown after 'unproductive' White House meeting
updated 9:59 PM EDT, Wed October 2, 2013
A U.S. Capitol police officer
walks past a statue of Gerald Ford in the rotunda on Tuesday, October 1.
The Capitol is closed to tours because of the government shutdown.
HIDE CAPTION
Parks, museums: Sorry, we're closed
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Senate Minority Leader McConnell calls White House meeting "unproductive"
- NEW: Neither side discussed any potential compromise, a GOP source says
- An 'exasperated' Obama says no negotiations until the government reopens
- The government shut down began on Tuesday in a stalemate over spending
The White House meeting,
coming a day after the start of the federal government shutdown, served
at least one purpose, in that key players in the debate gathered
together in the same room for over an hour: Obama called it "useful,"
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said it was "worthwhile," and House
Speaker John Boehner cast it as a "polite conversation."
But while the sides talked, there was no indication they agreed on anything or even shifted their views.
Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell, for instance, went so far as to call it "unproductive."
Neither side discussed any potential compromises, with Obama and Vice
President Joe Biden doing most of the talking and Boehner making clear
he won't go forward with a "clean" funding bill -- with no Obamacare
amendments -- a GOP congressional source said.
Republicans, led by tea
party conservatives in the House, have demanded provisions to defund or
delay Obama's signature Affordable Care Act be attached to any
government spending plan, a strategy that Democrats have called a
non-starter.
Moreover, the
parties are on the verge of another crisis -- over whether to raise the
debt ceiling by October 17, at which point the federal government won't
be able to pay its bills.
"At times like this, the
American people expect their leaders to come together to find ways to
resolve their differences," Boehner said. "The president reiterated one
more time tonight that he will not negotiate."
A few minutes later,
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claimed that it was Boehner -- not the
president or his fellow Democrats -- who has refused to budge on
budgetary matters, saying "we're through playing these little games."
Reid said Democratic
leaders offered Boehner "a lifeline" by setting up negotiations "about
anything that you want to talk about" so long as the House agrees to
reopen the government first.
"I thought that they
were concerned about the long-term fiscal affairs of this country. And
we said, 'we are too. Let's talk about it,'" the Nevada Democrat said.
"My friend, John Boehner ... cannot take yes for an answer."
In an interview with
CNBC prior to the meeting, Obama said he was "prepared to negotiate on
anything" regarding the federal budget -- but only after Congress passes
"a clean piece of legislation that reopens the government" and allows
the U.S. "Treasury to pay for things that Congress itself already
authorized."
"Am I exasperated?"
Obama said of Boehner, who is under pressure from fiscal hawks, and is
refusing to let the House vote on the Senate-approved spending plan. "I
am absolutely exasperated, because this is entirely unnecessary."
The president
foreshadowed Boehner's comments that he wouldn't negotiate with
Republicans in their attempts to tie government funding to Obamacare
changes. Doing so, the president said, would set a dangerous precedent.
"If we get in the habit
where a few folks, an extremist wing of one party ... are allowed to
extort concessions based on a threat of undermining the full faith and
credit of the United States, then any president that comes after me ...
will find themselves unable to govern effectively," Obama said. "And
that is not something that I'm going to allow to happen."
GOP spending measures unlikely to advance
Fresh off having sent
four separate proposals tying funding the government to either delaying
or defunding Obamacare -- each of which was rejected by the Senate --
the GOP-led House continued to work Wednesday, albeit on another plan
Democrats say won't go anywhere.
A day after an initial
effort failed because the short-term proposals comprising a tiny portion
of the overall federal budget lacked the necessary two-thirds majority
support due to Democratic opposition, the House passed -- with majority
support -- bills to fund national parks, the National Institutes of
Health and District of Columbia operations.
The incremental approach
pushed by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas seeks to pressure Democrats to approve
spending for programs that Republicans like, but not Obamacare.
Yet Obama has signaled
he'd veto those measures should they reach his desk. That's unlikely,
given that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has dismissed the GOP
approach as "reckless and irresponsible."
While expressing
openness to budgetary negotiations generally, Democrats have said
they'll only talk after Congress passes a clean spending measure. Both
Democrats and Republicans say such a bill would pass the House with
support from the Democratic minority and moderate Republicans.
So far, Boehner has
succumbed to pressure from the tea party right to avoid a vote that
would pass something without causing some harm to the health care
reforms.
One problem is that
conservative House Republicans from home districts with no realistic
Democratic challenge feel emboldened to pursue a more extremist ideology
backed by their supporters, CNN Chief National Correspondent John King
said.
"More people say raise
the debt ceiling and fight the health care debate somewhere else," he
noted. "But there's enough here, if you think of a Republican going home
to his district, there's enough here to understand why the Republicans
think they're on safe ground dragging this out."
Decision to raise debt ceiling, or risk default, looms
The looming debt crisis could pose even more headaches, and confrontation, in the coming weeks.
Failing to raise it may
mean a U.S. default on its debt, something Obama stressed in Wednesday's
White House meeting that the country can't afford to do, according to
Reid.
Obama offered no
indication that he'll budge. Noting that such Republican brinkmanship in
2011 led to the first-ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating, the
president said Tuesday he "will not negotiate over Congress'
responsibility to pay bills it's already racked up."
Writing the same day in
USA Today, Boehner dug in his heels on the issue, saying "there is no
way Congress can or should pass such a bill without spending cuts and
reforms to deal with the debt and deficit."
Still, that crisis is
still a few weeks away. The government shutdown is the one currently
affecting hundreds of thousands of furloughed government workers, not to
mention millions of others who rely on government programs, visit
national parks and have some other type of interaction with affected
programs.
One moderate Republican
who has backed a clean spending measure, Rep. Michael Grimm of New York,
said that "both sides have dug in." Democrats, who he said "won't even
have a discussion," put House Republicans in a tight spot where they
feel compelled to hold their ground or else "set a bad precedent that
the Senate would be somewhat dictating how the House runs."
But if Democrats agreed
to listen, Grimm expressed optimism "that we would put a package
together and solve the problems at once, so we can get the government
funded, stop the shutdown, and also deal with the debt ceiling so we
don't have another crisis a week or two away from now."
Pelosi said that scores
of Democrats have reluctantly offered to back a plan to fund the entire
government at a figure that's been bandied about by Republicans, albeit
well below what her party members want. The other option would be to
reconcile budgets passed by both chambers earlier this year in a
conference committee, as is Washington custom.
But what Democrats won't
stand for, Pelosi said, is GOP legislators shuttering the government
due to their opposition to Obamacare, which previously passed through
Congress and withstood a Supreme Court challenge.
"That's not what our
Constitution had in mind: that if you don't like something, you threaten
to shut down the government," the California Democrat said. "It's not
that kind of system."
A blow to the economy
The shutdown of the government -- the country's largest employer -- isn't happening all at once.
Federal employees who
are considered essential will continue working. Those deemed
non-essential -- up to 800,000 -- could be furloughed, unsure when
they'll be able to work or get paid again.
The shutdown could cost
the still-struggling U.S. economy about $1 billion a week in pay lost by
furloughed federal workers. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
While many agencies have
reserve funds and contingency plans that would give them some
short-term leeway, the economic effect would snowball as the shutdown
continued.
The total economic
impact is likely to be at least 10 times greater than the simple
calculation of lost wages of federal workers, said Brian Kessler,
economist with Moody's Analytics. His firm estimates that a three- to
four-week shutdown would cost the economy about $55 billion.
And it's already had
political ramifications extending beyond the United States. On
Wednesday, Obama canceled planned visits next week to Malaysia and the
Philippines as part of an Asian swing that will include a summit of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations on Bali. Obama will still attend
the ASEAN summit, his office said.
CNN's Tom Cohen wrote and reported from
Washington, and CNN's Greg Botelho did the same from Atlanta. CNN's
Brianna Keilar, Athena Jones, Dana Bash, Jim Acosta and Deirdre Walsh
contributed to this report.
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