On Thursday, President Obama gave a speech in Rockville, MD, focusing on small businesses and how they are being impacted by the government shutdown. Obama continued to call the actions of Republicans “reckless,” and pointed out that they could be holding back the nation’s economic recovery process.
“The only thing that is keeping the government shut down, the only thing preventing people from going back to work, and basic research starting back up, and farmers and small business owners, getting their loans — the only thing that’s preventing all that from happening right now today, in the next five minutes, is that Speaker John Boehner won’t even let the bill get a yes-or-no vote because he doesn’t want to anger the extremists in his party,” Obama said.
However, Republicans are standing their ground, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said that the Democrats have an “untenable” position.
In a memo released by CNN, Cantor said: “While no one can predict with certainty how the current shutdown will be resolved, I am confident that if we keep advancing commonsense solutions to the problems created by the shutdown that Senate Democrats and President Obama will eventually agree to meaningful discussions that would allow us to ultimately resolve this impasse.”
In his speech to workers at M. Luis Construction, Obama also emphasized that the debt ceiling must be raised in order to keep the economy afloat. “As reckless as a government shutdown is, an economic shutdown that results from default would be dramatically worse,” Obama said.
