President Obama said Friday that he will not negotiate with congressional Republicans over raising the federal debt ceiling.
“When it comes to the debt ceiling, we’re not going back there,” Obama said at a press conference Friday, referring to past negotiations with Republicans in 2011.
“We’re not going to negotiate on that,” the president said of the debt ceiling.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned this week that the $18.1 trillion debt limit must be raised by Nov. 5 to guarantee that the federal government does not default on its obligations.
That deadline comes before the mid-December expiration of government spending authorization set in a short-term stopgap spending bill passed by Congress this week.
Earlier in the press conference, Obama said he would not sign another short-term bill, saying instead that negotiators need to approve a budget agreement to lift federal spending caps.
Before then, however, they must vote to raise the debt ceiling or face the potentially globally destablizing consequences of a U.S. debt default, Obama warned.
“It has to get done in the next five weeks.”
