Politics
Obama: U.S. government shutdown threatening economy
U.S. President Barack Obama. PHOTO/File
U.S. President Barack Obama said on the first day of a partial federal government shutdown that House Republicans are on an “ideological crusade” against his health-care law, and called on them to stop holding the economy hostage.
Obama, in a speech Tuesday afternoon in the White House Rose Garden, urged Republicans to reopen the government quickly and allow furloughed federal employees to return to work.
He concluded his address by saying Congress needed to stop “governing by crisis,” and that the longer the shutdown goes on, “the worse it would get.”
With the partial government shutdown, the latest twist in a long-running dispute over Obama’s health-care law, a temporary funding bill has been stalled, forcing about 800,000 federal workers off the job and suspending most non-essential programs and services.
In a letter emailed to federal employees, Obama said it was “completely preventable.” He called on the House of Representatives to pass a law reopening the government and giving workers back pay.
The president also laments that government employees have become “punching bags” in Washington’s partisan fiscal fights.
The shutdown, the first since the winter of 1995-96, closed national parks, museums along the Washington Mall and the U.S. Capitol visitors center, along with monuments like the National World War II Memorial – which was reportedly stormed and occupied by Second World War veterans who travelled from Mississippi to visit the monument – and the Statue of Liberty. Agencies like NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency will be all but shuttered.
