President Obama Immediately Rejects House Republican Debt Ceiling Bill as Ransom

Read the biggest developments from Michael Cohen's testimony.

President Obama and the White House have immediately rejected the House own proposed debt ceiling bill, and labeled their attempt “ransom.”

In a statement, the White House rejected the House GOP debt ceiling proposal,

The president has said repeatedly that members of Congress don’t get to demand ransom for fulfilling their basic responsibilities to pass a budget and pay the nation’s bills. Unfortunately, the latest proposal from House Republicans does just that in a partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans who forced the government shutdown in the first place

Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have been working in a bipartisan, good-faith effort to end the manufactured crises that have already harmed American families and business owners. With only a couple days remaining until the United States exhausts its borrowing authority, it’s time for the House to do the same.

I would say that the White House’s reaction to Boehner’s plan to pass his debt ceiling bill that attacks the ACA could be accurately called a great, big, fat, absolute no. I don’t know how many times the House Republicans have to hear this, but President Obama is not going to accept any changes to the ACA.

As Sarah Jones put it, Republicans are trying to sabotage the Senate agreement to open the government and raise the debt ceiling with poison pills. Boehner and the House Republicans are threatening to pass their bill, and leave town. It appears that what the House Republicans are trying to do is run out the clock in order to force Democrats to accept changes to the ACA.

President Obama is not going to pay a ransom to the House Republicans. It doesn’t matter if the nation is two weeks, two days, or two minutes from default, the president isn’t going to budge on the ACA. The White House understands that if they give the House Republicans anything in exchange for shutting the government down and threatening default, they will be back again and again. In the future Republicans would use what they got out of this crisis as precedent for future demands.

President Obama is not going to allow that to happen. Republicans are still getting nothing. President Barack Obama continues to stand firm on the principle that he will not negotiate with economic terrorists.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association