With no clear end to the government shutdown in sight President Barack Obama has invited Republican legislators to meet with him at the White House in the next couple of days to try and find a way to reopen the government and to reach an agreement to raise the debt ceiling before the Oct. 17 deadline, according to the Associated Press.
The shutdown occurred when the Senate and the House were unable to agree on a continuing resolution to fund the government past Oct. 1 due to disagreements over President Obama's signature piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act. House Republicans refused to pass a CR that didn't defund the health care law they call Obamacare; the Senate and President Obama would not accept any bill that took any funds away from the law.
Neither side has budged. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has repeatedly accused President Obama of being unwilling to negotiate while the president has argued that there is nothing to negotiate over since the Affordable Care Act's funding was already agreed upon when it became a law three years ago.
"Americans expect us to work out our differences, but refusing to negotiate is an untenable position," Boehner said. "What the president said today was, if there is an unconditional surrender by Republicans, he'll sit down and talk to us. That's not the way government works."
Boehner and President Obama spoke on the phone Tuesday and it appears as if very little progress was made. What Boehner and the GOP are calling an unwillingness to negotiate the President considers refusing to respond to threats, according to the New York Times.
"I am happy to talk with him and other Republicans about anything - not just issues I think are important but also issues that they think are important," President Obama said. "But I also told him that having such a conversation, talks, negotiations shouldn't require hanging the threats of a government shutdown or economic chaos over the heads of the American people."
The president is expected to meet with Democrats from the House on Wednesday with more meetings scheduled with other lawmakers throughout the week as they search for a way to make a deal to reopen the government. Currently the president is advocating a short-term deal that will end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling to avoid imminent trouble and then discussing long-term budget compromises once the threat of default has been removed. So far, this has been deemed unacceptable by Republicans, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The longer the government shutdown continues the American people, regardless of political affiliation, get angrier and angrier and Congress. A recent poll by Public Policy Polling asked people if they preferred hemorrhoids to Congress with 53 percent choosing the painful ailment over the legislators, according to the Los Angeles Times.
