Obama blames GOP speaker as shutdown fears escalate
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama laid the blame for the government’s partial shutdown at the feet of House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday, escalating a confrontation that risks a potentially damaging clash over the nation’s borrowing authority.
The Treasury Department warned that a deadlock over raising the nation’s debt limit could touch off a new recession even worse than the last one from which Americans are still recovering. Worry about prospects for resolving the debt question within the next two weeks deepened as the shutdown standoff dragged on — growing more personal, Thursday.
Speaking at a construction company in Washington’s Maryland suburbs, Obama cast the House speaker as a captive of a small band of conservative Republicans who want to extract concessions in exchange for passing a short-term spending bill that would restart the partially shuttered government.
“The only thing preventing people from going back to work and basic research starting back up and farmers and small business owners getting their loans, the only thing that is preventing all that from happening ... is that Speaker John Boehner won’t even let the bill get a yes-or-no vote because he doesn’t want to anger the extremists in his party,” Obama said.
Boehner answered by blaming Obama’s “my-wayor-the-highway approach.” He said that if the president would negotiate to fix flaws in “ObamaCare,” the shutdown could end.
Majority leader Eric Cantor said the House would continue on its course of passing separate bills to remedy “situations that are in critical stages” because of the partial government shutdown that began Tuesday.
Senate Democrats and Obama said the House must send them a measure that would restart all of government, no strings attached.
Moderate Republicans have tried unsuccessfully to provide enough votes to join with minority Democrats and push a bill through the House reopening the government with no restrictions on the health care law.