A self-described "exasperated" President Barack Obama told Wall Street
CEOs on Wednesday that they should not take for granted that the
Republican-led House of Representatives will raise the nation's debt
ceiling by Oct. 17.
"I think this time is different," the
president said, when asked by CNBC's John Harwood whether the financial
markets were right to assume that the upcoming conflict would ultimately
get resolved in time. "I think they should be concerned."
Speaking
less than two hours before he was set to meet with congressional
leadership to discuss both the debt ceiling and a way out of the current
impasse over the government shutdown, the president argued that he had
already sacrificed a lot during these negotiations, having agreed to
fund the government at sequestration levels. And while he said would be
willing to consider changes to his health care law -- a key demand of
House Republicans --- he refused to do it during the fight over the
shutdown or debt limit.
"I have bent over backwards to work with the Republican Party, and have purposely kept my rhetoric down," he said.
On
a macro level, the president stressed that one of the reasons he could
not bend much further was that it would forever institutionalize the
concept of governing by hostage taking: What we're debating right
now is keeping the government open for two months. We would then be
going through this exact same thing in the middle of Christmas shopping
season, which I don't think many businesses would be interested in. We
saw what happened in 2011. And then we'd have to go through it again six
months from now and six months after that. And one thing that I know
the American people are tired of, and I have to assume the vast majority
of businesses are tired of, is this constant governing from crisis to
crisis. So in that sense, do we need to break that fever? Absolutely. We
have to stop doing that. Let's get a budget that allows people to plan
over the long term that allows us to deal with our fiscal problems in a
sensible, reasonable way. Even on an issue like health care, if they
want to give me specific suggestions around how we can improve delivery
of health insurance to people who need it, people with preexisting
conditions, I'm happy to talk to them about it. But I'm not going to do
it subject to the threat that somehow America defaults on its
obligations.
On a more substantive matter, the president didn't
formally rule out the idea of trading entitlement reforms for spending
increases as a part of broader budget talks (should they ever occur).
Instead, he sidestepped Harwood's question. Obama said that he would not
raise tax rates on individual income, but he stressed that he would
like to raise revenue through tax reform to pay for some economic
stimulus, such as infrastructure spending.
