President Obama, following a meeting on Wednesday night with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the ongoing budget negotiations, addressed the nation briefly saying he was confident that an agreement could be reached to break the budget impasse. Obama said the meeting was a productive one which helped narrow and clarify the issues.
“I remain confident that if we’re serious about getting something done we should be able to complete a deal and get it passed and avert a shutdown,” Obama said. “But it’s going to require a sufficient sense of urgency from all parties involved. It means that people have to recognize that a government shutdown has real consequences for real people.”
Obama in his brief remarks also referenced a man from Kentucky–J.T. Henderson who is counting on his tax rebate, which he might not get if the government shuts down.
He quoted J.T as saying, “if he could speak directly to all of us in Washington he’d tell us that all of this political grandstanding has effects as it trickles down to normal, everyday Americans.”
Obama said, he could not have said it better than J.T. He added that if the government were to shutdown, it would have consequences for small business owners, people who are potentially processing a mortgage and hundreds of thousands of workers may have to go without paychecks.
“And at a time when the economy is still coming out of an extraordinarily deep recession, it would be inexcusable, given the relatively narrow differences when it comes to numbers between the two parties, that we can’t get this done,” Obama said.
Following Obama’s remarks, Boehner and Reid jointly spoke briefly to reporters. Both acknowledged that the late night conversations had been “honest”, but that no agreement had been reached.
“I do think we made some progress,” Boehner said. “But there is no agreement on a number and there is no agreement on the policy side.”
Meanwhile on Thursday morning, Reid appeared less optimistic that a deal could be reached saying that talks were stymied by two Republican policy provisions related to abortion and the environment.
“The numbers are basically there, but I am not nearly as optimistic — and that’s an understatement — as I was 11 hours ago,” Reid said, washingtonpost.com reported. “The numbers are extremely close, and our differences are no longer over how much savings we get on government spending. The only thing holding up an agreement is ideology. I’m sorry to say that my friend, the speaker, and the Republican leadership have drawn a line in the sand not dealing with the deficit we know we have to deal with, not with the numbers that fund the government for the rest of this fiscal year. The issue is ideology, not numbers.”
Reid added, “It’s not realistic to shut down the government on a debate dealing with abortion. It’s not fair to the American people. We haven’t solved the issue in 40 years. We’re not going to solve it in the next 38 hours. We should not be distracted by ideology. This is a bill that funds the government.”
If Congress can’t agree on a budget for the remainder of the year, come midnight on Friday, a government shutdown will occur, affecting people all over the country.
Only with this worthless Congress and incompetent leadership!
