Obama Accuses GOP of Threatening Recession in Budget Fight - East Idaho News
News

Obama Accuses GOP of Threatening Recession in Budget Fight

  Published at

100813 PresidentObama1?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1381259420890The White House(WASHINGTON) — Eight days into the government shutdown and with the deadline to raise the debt ceiling looming, President Obama accused House Republicans on Tuesday of threatening to cause a recession if the administration refuses to gut Obamacare.

The president spoke in the second week of a government shutdown and after placing a phone call to House Speaker John Boehner, the Republican leading the fight against Obamacare that has created a stalemate over funding the government.

“You don’t get to say, ‘Unless you give me what the voters rejected in the last election I will cause a recession,'” Obama told reporters Tuesday.

He rhetorically asked, “Imagine if a Democratic Congress threatened to crash the global economy” unless a gun controls law was approved.

The president urged Republicans to pass a clean funding bill to reopen the government and eliminate the threat of default by agreeing to raise the debt limit.

“Let’s stop the excuses. Let’s take a vote in the House. Let’s end this shutdown right now,” he said.

“Let’s lift these threats,” he continued. “Let’s get down to work.”

Obama fielded questions from the White House Press Corps for the time since the government shut down, his first solo White House press conference since Aug. 9.

The question and answer session was part of the administration’s ongoing effort to highlight the negative impacts of the shutdown and the looming deadline to raise the debt ceiling. In the past week, Obama has made several public appearances in an attempt to put pressure on Republicans to pass a “clean” funding bill, one with no “partisan strings attached” and reopen the government.

In the new ABC News/Washington Post poll 70 percent disapprove of the way Republicans are handling these negotiations, up 7 points from a week ago. The president has a 51 percent disapproval rating.

While there has been limited progress between the White House and Republicans, the lines of communication are open. The president phoned House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Tuesday morning to reiterate that he is willing to negotiate with Republicans, but only after they agree to reopen the government and eliminate the threat of default.

Boehner’s spokesman, however, said that “the president called the speaker again today to reiterate that he won’t negotiate on a government funding bill or debt-limit increase.”

As the standstill continues, House Republicans are expected to vote on a measure to establish a new committee of lawmakers to immediately begin negotiating a deal to reduce the deficit, increase the debt limit, and end the shutdown.

Boehner, however, declined Tuesday to detail what he hopes to get out of the proposed talks.

“I want to have a conversation. I’m not drawing any lines in the sand,” he said in a Capitol Hill news conference. “It’s time for us to just sit down and resolve our differences.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

SUBMIT A CORRECTION