WASHINGTON — President Obama and House speaker John A. Boehner amped up their rhetoric Tuesday as the standoff over the shutdown and a potential default on the nation’s debt reached a new level of discord and uncertainty.
Even a temporary route to break the logjam — the possibility of raising the nation’s borrowing authority for a few weeks to stave off economic calamity and allow time for substantial negotiations — did not win any agreement, despite offering an opportunity for both sides to save face.
Obama and Boehner had a brief phone conversation Tuesday morning, then followed that up with dueling press conferences that revealed how deeply the two sides remain divided.
“If reasonable Republicans want to talk about these things again, I’m ready to head up to the Hill and try,” Obama said during a press conference. “I’ll even spring for dinner again.”
But, he added, “I’m not going to do it until the more extreme parts of the Republican Party stop forcing John Boehner to issue threats about our economy. We can’t make extortion routine as part of our democracy.”
The economic warning came Tuesday as stocks fell sharply and consumer confidence, as measured by Gallup, has fallen by more than it has in any week since the Lehman Brothers collapse of 2008, the beginning of the global economic crisis.
The Obama administration has warned that the nation faces default on its credit beginning Oct. 17. Republicans have pounded Obama for days for refusing to negotiate terms for an end to the dispute. Obama, in a press conference lasting more than hour, went to extraordinary lengths to explain to ordinary Americans why he believes “paying ransom’’ in exchange for raising the debt ceiling is “nonnegotiable.’’
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