After Obama’s speech, when he compared Republicans to criminals who had take the nation ransom, challenging them to let the Congress vote, and saying the government shut down could end today, if only Republicans wanted it, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) responded in his own press conference, saying the president was asking for “unconditional surrender.”
“The president said today if there’s unconditional surrender by Republicans, he’ll sit down and talk to us,” said Boehner this Tuesday. “That’s not the way our government works.”
Boehner mentioned that he and the president had talked on the telephone, at which point the president insisted on his trenchant point, that he was seeking only a “clean” bill to raise the debt ceiling, with nothing to hamstring Obamacare. Boehner said that though it was a “pleasant” conversation, he felt “disappointed.”
“It’s time to have that conversation,” said Boehner, referring to talking about Health Care reform before ending the government shutdown. “Not next week, not next month – the conversation needs to begin today. The long and short of it is, there’s going to be a negotiation.”
The ultimate testing ground will be if Congress can get its act in order before Oct. 17, the government deadline for a breach in debt limit. If that isn’t addressed, we could see stock and bond markets plummet, leading into another recession. We should remember that it wasn’t nuclear warfare that ended Soviet Russia, but bankruptcy.
“I didn’t come here to shut down the government,” said Boehner. “And I certainly didn’t come here to default on our debt.”
“All we’re asking for is to sit down and have a conversation,” said Boehner. “There’s no reason to make it more difficult to bring people to the table. There’s no boundaries here. There’s nothing on the table, there’s nothing off the table. I’m trying to do everything I can to bring people together and have a conversation.”
Whether this “conversation” ever happens, or whether our economy is sacrificed in the feud, will soon unfold.