In the same way, members of Congress, and the House Republicans in particular, don't get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their jobs. And two of their very basic jobs are passing a budget and making sure that America's paying its bills. They don't also get to say, you know, unless you give me what the voters rejected in the last election, I'm going to cause a recession.
That's not how it works. No American president would deal with a foreign leader like this. Most of you would not deal with either co- workers or business associates in this fashion. And we shouldn't be dealing this way here in Washington.
And you know, I've heard Republicans suggest that, well, no, this is reasonable, that this is entirely appropriate. But as I've said before, imagine if a Democratic Congress threatened to crash the global economy unless a Republican president agreed to gun background checks or immigration reform. I think it's fair to say that Republicans would not think that was appropriate.
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Now the last time that the tea party Republicans flirted with the idea of default, two years ago, markets plunged, business and consumer confidence plunged, America's credit rating was downgraded for the first time, and a decision to actually go through with it, to actually permit default, according to many CEOs and economists, would be -- and I'm quoting here -- "insane, catastrophic, chaos" -- these are some of the more polite words.
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So we can't afford these manufactured crises every few months. And as I said, this one isn't even about deficits or spending or budgets. Our deficits are falling at the fastest pace in 60 years. The budget that the Senate passed is at Republican spending levels. It's their budget that Democrats were willing to put votes on just to make sure the government was open while negotiations took place for a longer-term budget. And what's happened -- the way we got to this point was one thing and one thing only, and that was Republican obsession with dismantling the Affordable Care Act and denying health care to millions of people. That law ironically is moving forward.
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We can't make extortion routine as part of our democracy. Democracy doesn't function this way. And this is not just for me; it's also for my successors in office. Whatever party they're from, they shouldn't have to pay a ransom either for Congress doing its basic job. We've got to put a stop to it.
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The greatest nation on earth shouldn't have to get permission from a few irresponsible members of Congress every couple months just to keep our government open or to prevent an economic catastrophe.
