President Obama, Rep. Rodgers duel over budget showdown

As Speaker John Boehner was trying to organize his troops in the face of Democratic stone-walling over linking Obamacare to a budget deal, President Obama and GOP conference chair Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers were weighing in from the sidelines.

|
Jonathan Ernst/REUTERS
US Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the House Republican Conference Chair, talks with fellow members as they arrive for a closed-door meeting of the GOP caucus during a rare Saturday session.

At the moment, all eyes in the budget battle that could lead to a government shutdown come Monday midnight are on the House of Representatives, where Republicans are looking for a way to at least stymie the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – without being held responsible for disrupting federal services and programs, furloughing hundreds of thousands of workers.

“We’ve seen this movie before,” warns Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona, one of the minority of sitting lawmakers who actually did see that movie before – back in 1995/96 when a government shutdown was blamed largely on Republicans.

As House Speaker John Boehner was trying to organize his troops in the face of Democratic stone-walling over linking Obamacare to a budget deal, President Obama and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R) of Washington State, who chairs the GOP conference in the House, were weighing in from the sidelines.

In their respective radio and Internet addresses Saturday, Obama and Rep. Rodgers had decidedly different messages about who is to blame for the potential impasse and what to do about it.

“Republicans in the House have been more concerned with appeasing an extreme faction of their party than working to pass a budget that creates new jobs or strengthens the middle class,” Obama said. “And in the next couple days, these Republicans will have to decide whether to join the Senate and keep the government open, or create a crisis that will hurt people for the sole purpose of advancing their ideological agenda.”

For her part, Rodgers leap-frogged the threat of an imminent government shutdown, focusing on what could be a more serious threat a couple of weeks out – failure to raise the debt limit by the Oct. 17 deadline, which would put the US government in default – something that’s never happened before – and be a major blow to the US economy and standing in the world.

“The president is now demanding that we increase the debt limit without engaging in any kind of bipartisan discussions about addressing our spending problem,” she said. “He wants to take the easy way out – exactly the kind of foolishness that got us here in the first place.”

"By an overwhelming margin, Americans believe any debt ceiling increase should be coupled with solutions that help solve our debt and grow our economy," Rodgers said, citing a list of things "from approving the Keystone pipeline and fixing our outdated tax code to delaying the president's health care law."

But this last point gets back to the main point in the current political stare-down: Tying Obamacare to budget and debt ceiling.

Tuesday Oct. 1 is the date for a possible government shutdown, and it’s also when a major provision of the Affordable Care Act kicks in, opening the health insurance marketplace for millions of Americans.

Naturally, Obama on Saturday had something to say about that too, pointing listeners and viewers to HealthCare.gov as he touted what’s likely to be remembered as the most important law passed during his presidency.

“This is a website where you can compare insurance plans, side-by-side, the same way you’d shop for a TV or a plane ticket,” he said. “You’ll see new choices and new competition. Many of you will see cheaper prices, and many of you will be eligible for tax credits that bring down your costs even more.”

“These marketplaces will be open for business on Tuesday, no matter what,” Obama said.

Unless, that is, every pundit is wrong and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada didn’t mean it when he said the only spending bill Democrats would vote for would be one “stripped of all the craziness.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to President Obama, Rep. Rodgers duel over budget showdown
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/DC-Decoder/2013/0928/President-Obama-Rep.-Rodgers-duel-over-budget-showdown
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe