Slams GOP Shutdown ‘Farce’
Talking about the GOP shutdown and Obamacare, President Obama yesterday asked workers at a Rockville, Maryland construction company what would happen if they decided to shutdown their workplace. “You’d get fired!” one worker responded. “You’d get fired” the President agreed.
The President has been speaking out about the House Republican and Tea Party led federal government shutdown, and took the GOP to task yesterday.
Referring to a comment made by Republican Congressman Marlin Stutzman of Indiana, President Obama reminded the GOP that they weren’t elected to the House to “get” something.
“You have already gotten the opportunity to serve the American people. There is no higher honor than that,” the President said, to great applause. “You’ve already gotten the opportunity to help businesses like this one, workers like these. So the American people aren’t in the mood to give you a goodie bag to go with it. What you get is our intelligence professionals being back on the job. What you get is our medical researchers back on the job. What you get are little kids back into Head Start. What you get are our national parks and monuments open again. What you get is the economy not stalling, but continuing to grow. What you get are workers continuing to be hired. That’s what you get. That’s what you should be asking for.”
Here’s the video:
//www.youtube.com/embed/plpYeKJABb8
Here’s an excerpt of the text of the President’s comments, via the White House:
THE PRESIDENT: But as I said, the problem we’ve got is that there’s one faction of one party, in one half of one branch of government that so far has refused to allow that yes-or-no vote unless they get some massive partisan concessions in exchange for doing what they’re supposed to be doing anyway, in exchange for doing what everybody else agrees is necessary. And they won’t agree to end the shutdown until they get their way. And you may think I’m exaggerating, but just the other day, one tea party Republican called the idea of a shutdown “wonderful.†Another said that a shutdown is “exactly what we wanted.†Well, they got exactly what they wanted. Now they’re trying to figure out how to get out of it.
Just yesterday, one House Republican said — I’m quoting here, because I want to make sure people understand I didn’t make this up. One House Republican said, “We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.†That was a quote. “We’re not going to be disrespected. We have got to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.” Think about that.
You have already gotten the opportunity to serve the American people. There is no higher honor than that. (Applause.) You’ve already gotten the opportunity to help businesses like this one, workers like these. So the American people aren’t in the mood to give you a goodie bag to go with it. What you get is our intelligence professionals being back on the job. What you get is our medical researchers back on the job. (Applause.) What you get are little kids back into Head Start. (Applause.) What you get are our national parks and monuments open again. What you get is the economy not stalling, but continuing to grow. (Applause.) What you get are workers continuing to be hired. That’s what you get. That’s what you should be asking for. Take a vote, stop this farce, and end this shutdown right now. (Applause.)
If you’re being disrespected, it’s because of that attitude you got that you deserve to get something for doing your job. Everybody here just does their job, right? If you’re working here and in the middle of the day you just stopped and said, you know what, I want to get something, but I don’t know exactly what I’m going to get. (Laughter.) But I’m just going to stop working until I get something. I’m going to shut down the whole plant until I get something.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You’d get fired.
THE PRESIDENT: You’d get fired. (Applause.) Right? Because the deal is you’ve already gotten hired. You’ve got a job. You’re getting a paycheck. And so you also are getting the pride of doing a good job and contributing to a business and looking out for your fellow workers. That’s what you’re getting. Well, it shouldn’t be any different for a member of Congress.
Now, unlike past shutdowns — I want to make sure everybody understands this because, again, sometimes the tendency is to say, well, both sides are at fault. This one has nothing to do with deficits or spending or budgets. Our deficits are falling at the fastest pace in 60 years. We’ve cut the deficits in half since I took office. (Applause.) And some of the things that the Republicans are asking for right now would actually add to our deficits, seriously.
So this is not about spending. And this isn’t about fiscal responsibility. This whole thing is about one thing: the Republican obsession with dismantling the Affordable Care Act and denying affordable health insurance to millions of Americans. (Applause.) That’s all this has become about. That seems to be the only thing that unites the Republican Party these days.
Through this whole fight, they’ve said the American people don’t want Obamacare, so we should shut down the government to repeal it or delay it. But here’s the problem: The government is now shut down, but the Affordable Care Act is still open for business. (Applause.) So they’re not even accomplishing what they say they want to accomplish. And, by the way, in the first two days since the new marketplaces — basically big group plans that we’ve set up — the first two days that they opened, websites where you can compare and purchase new affordable insurance plans and maybe get tax credits to reduce your costs, millions of Americans have made it clear they do want health insurance. (Applause.)
More than 6 million people visited the website HealthCare.gov the day it opened. Nearly 200,000 people picked up the phone and called the call center. In Kentucky alone — this is a state where — I didn’t win Kentucky. (Laughter.) So I know they weren’t doing it for me. In Kentucky, nearly 11,000 people applied for new insurance plans in the first two days — just in one state, Kentucky. And many Americans are finding out when they go on the website that they’ll save a lot of money or get health insurance for the first time.
So I would think that if, in fact, this was going to be such a disaster that the Republicans say it’s going to be, that it was going to be so unpopular, they wouldn’t have to shut down the government. They could wait, nobody would show any interest, there would be, like, two people on the website — (laughter) — and everybody would then vote for candidates who want to repeal it.
It’s not as if Republicans haven’t had a chance to debate the health care law. It passed the House of Representatives. It passed the Senate. The Supreme Court ruled it constitutional — you remember all this. Last November, voters rejected the presidential candidate that ran on a platform to repeal it. (Applause.) So the Affordable Care Act has gone through every single democratic process, all three branches of government. It’s the law of the land. It’s here to stay.
I’ve said to Republicans, if there are specific things you think can improve the law to make it even better for people as opposed to just gutting it and leaving 25 million people without health insurance, I’m happy to talk to you about that. But a Republican shutdown won’t change the fact that millions of people need health insurance, and that the Affordable Care Act is being implemented. The shutdown does not change that. All the shutdown is doing is making it harder for ordinary Americans to get by, and harder for businesses to create jobs at a time when our economy is just starting to gain traction again.
You’ve heard Republicans say that Obamacare will hurt the economy, but the economy has been growing and creating jobs. The single-greatest threat to our economy and to our businesses like this one is not the Affordable Care Act, it’s the unwillingness of Republicans in Congress to stop refighting a settled election, or making the demands that have nothing to do with the budget. They need to move on to the actual business of governing. That’s what will help the economy. That’s what will grow the economy. That’s what will put people back to work. (Applause.)