President Obama warned Congress Friday that the short-term spending bill he just signed to keep the government open through mid-December is the last short-term bill he’d sign.
“I will not sign another short-sighted spending bill like the one Congress sent me this week,” he said at the White House. “We purchased ourselves 10 additional weeks, we need to use them effectively.”
Obama signed legislation keeping the government funded until Dec. 11, and said that gives Congress two months to come up with a longer-term spending plan.
Congress must do its job; it can’t flirt with another shutdown,” he said. Republicans and Democrats are about to start negotiations on a spending plan going forward, and also a budget plan that takes them through 2017.
Obama used his remarks to call on Republicans to work with Democrats on a new spending plan, and said the GOP should be open to expanding spending, especially since budget deficits have fallen while he’s been in office.
Republicans, however, have pointed out that Obama’s policies themselves are what caused the budget deficit to soar, and that they have now fallen to the still-high levels that many Republicans opposed under President George W. Bush.
Obama also called on Congress to end the sequester. If it doesn’t, and it keeps the budget cuts in place, the government will soon be funded at the same level as it did was 2006.
“We can’t fund our country the way we did 10 years ago because we have greater demands, with an aging population, kids who need schools, roads that need to be fixed,” he said. “And we can’t cut our way to prosperity.”
“I’m sure the speaker’s race complicates these negotiations,” Obama said about upcoming budget negotiations, referring to House Speaker John Boehner’s stepping down.
“When it comes to the debt ceiling, we’re not going back there,” Obama said about any notion that Congress should refuse to raise it like it did briefly in 2011.
