Far from any signs of an early end to the US Government shutdown as it entered Day 5, Washington witnessed a mere display of frayed tempers and hardening of public postures, making the average American wonder how long this stand-off is going to last.
“Stop this farce. End this shutdown now,” President Barack Obama told House Republicans in the course of his weekly radio address on Saturday, making it clear yet again that he “won’t pay ransom in exchange for reopening the Government” or “for raising the debt ceiling”.
“The American people don’t get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their job. Neither does Congress. They don’t get to hold our democracy or our economy hostage over a settled law,” Obama said.
Republican Speaker John Boehner, riled by Obama’s tough stance and reported remark by a White House official that Democrats were “winning” the shutdown battle, fired back: “This isn’t some damn game.”
The comment, cited in an article in The Wall Street Journal, angered Boehner so much that he even suggested that he might still try to drive a hard bargain on spending cuts as a condition to raise by October 17 the US debt ceiling, which currently stands at $16.7 trillion.
“All we’re asking for is to sit down and have a discussion, reopen the Government and bring fairness to the American people under Obamacare,” Boehner told reporters.
The only compromise that should offer some solace to the federal employees put on forced leave without pay is support by both parties for a proposal to restore back pay to all the employees furloughed during the shutdown.
Save for that concession, both sides are sticking to their rigid positions. Obama has ruled out any negotiations on the shutdown or the debt ceiling. However, once these decks were cleared, he would be willing to negotiate with the Republicans on spending cuts, he said, noting: “We can’t do it with a gun held to the head of the American people.”
“There’s only one way out of this reckless and damaging shutdown: pass a budget that funds our Government, with no partisan strings attached. The Senate has already done this,” he said, yet commenting that “the far right of the Republican Party won’t let Speaker John Boehner give that bill a yes-or-no vote”.
House Democrats are counting on 22 moderate Republican lawmakers who are reportedly willing to help end the shutdown by declaring support for an unconditional bill to fund the Government. But the moot point is whether the Speaker would be ready to come up with a “clean” bill without the riders over “Obamacare”.
In the absence of any deal with Democrats, House Republicans have been occupying themselves with piecemeal legislation to fund nearly a dozen targeted programmes, including nutrition for low-income women and their children, intelligence gathering and border patrols.
But the Democrat-majority Senate has threatened to reject all such piecemeal funding initiatives. The White House also says President Obama will veto the piecemeal measures, except the one to pay federal workers retroactively once the Government reopens.