President Obama on the Ongoing Budget Negotiations

Tonight, President Obama met with Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the Oval Office on the ongoing budget negotiations.

Afterwards the President delivered a statement in the briefing room:

Good evening, everybody.  I'm going to just have a few quick remarks. 

We just had a productive meeting with Speaker Boehner, as well as Majority Leader Reid.  We discussed the impasse that we're currently at with respect to the budget, and I thought the meetings were frank, they were constructive, and what they did was narrow the issues and clarify the issues that are still outstanding.

I remain confident that if we're serious about getting something done we should be able to complete a deal and get it passed and avert a shutdown.  But it’s going to require a sufficient sense of urgency from all parties involved.  It means that people have to recognize that a government shutdown has real consequences for real people.

There was a interview that was done tonight on one of the nightly news networks -- a man from Kentucky named J.T. Henderson.  He said he’s counting on his tax rebate because his family has been scraping by, and he might not get it if the government shuts down.  So J.T. said if he could speak directly to all of us in Washington he’d tell us that all of this political grandstanding has effects as it trickles down to normal, everyday Americans.

I could not have said it better myself.  A shutdown could have real effects on everyday Americans.  That means that small business owners who are counting on that loan to open their business, to make payroll, to expand, suddenly they can't do it. It means folks who are potentially processing a mortgage, they may not be able to get it.  It means that hundreds of thousands of workers across the country suddenly are without a paycheck.  Their families are counting on them being able to go to work and do a good job.

There are ramifications all across this economy.  And at a time when the economy is still coming out of an extraordinarily deep recession, it would be inexcusable, given the relatively narrow differences when it comes to numbers between the two parties, that we can't get this done.

So my expectation is that folks are going to work through the night.  In the morning I will check in with the respective staffs of the Speaker and the Majority Leader, as well as my team here.  If we haven't made progress, we're going to go back at it again.  And we're going to keep on pounding away at this thing because I'm absolutely convinced that we can get this done.

There’s no reason why we should not be able to complete a deal.  There’s no reason why we should have a government shutdown -- unless we've made a decision that politics is more important than folks like J.T. Henderson. 

That's not why we we're elected. That's not why we were sent here.  And I want to meet the expectations of the American people in terms of delivering for them.

All right?  Thank you very much, everybody.