Obama Says GOP Debt Ceiling Demands Are an Assault on U.S. ‘Constitutional Structure’
Oliver Darcy
The Blaze
9/15/2013
President Barack Obama said in an interview which aired on Sunday that he “will not negotiate” on the debt ceiling with the GOP.
“What I haven’t been willing to negotiate, and I will not negotiate, is on the debt ceiling,” Obama told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview on “This Week.”
The comments come on the eve of another fiscal showdown, where House Republicans, seeking to defund and delay the implementation of the president’s landmark healthcare law, hope to negotiate concessions from the White House.
“If we continue to set a precedent in which a president … is in a situation in which each time the United States is called upon to pay its bills, the other party can simply sit there and say, ‘Well, we’re not going to put – pay the bills unless you give us … what we want,’ that changes the constitutional structure of this government entirely,” Obama said…
Obama said he is drawing a red line.
“What has never happened in the past was the notion that in exchange for fulfilling the full faith and credit of the United States, that we are wiping away let’s say major legislation like the health care bill,” he said.
“Never in history have we used just making sure that the U.S. government is paying its bills as a lever to radically cut government at the kind of scale that they’re talking about,” he added.
The video is at The Blaze.
CAJ note: If Speaker Boehner had a spine this could become a pivotal moment for his party…
As a U.S. Senator in March 2006 Obama said:
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America ‘s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”
Update: Doctors, doctors everywhere, but not a one to see you (under Obamacare exchange coverage)
Death Panels by a thousand cuts.
No one could have seen this coming, no one.
From the L.A. Times, that hotbed of right-wing scare-tactics, Insurers limiting doctors, hospitals in health insurance market…
Update 2: Pivot: Obama Back To Pushing Class Warfare: Republicans Stopping My Efforts To Redistribute Wealth…
