Jay Carney Quotes
The President will meet with Republicans at any time, but he will not pay the Republicans ransom to get them to do their job.
The Republicans had, in the view of most Americans at the time, refused to pass the legislation to provide money for the government to function unless President Obama would cancel the Health Care Reform that was his major legislative achievement of his first term, and passed over the objections of most Republicans who claimed it was unconstitutional. Then the Supreme Court upheld the Constitutionality of Obamacare, and the Tea Party Republicans pressured the regular republicans to shut down the entire government until the President relented and cancelled his own legislation. The American people resented this unprecedented of interfering with the Constitutional methods by which laws are passed, and after over a week of taxpayer additional costs for less service, the regular Republicans made a deal with the Democrats and produced a majority to reopen the Government.
Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary (Democrat), White House Press Briefing, October 9, 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
At the time, the Republicans held the House of Representatives, but not the Senate or the Presidency. By popular vote, even the House elections had the majority voting for the Democrats, but the gerrymandering gave the Republicans more seats. A minority of the minority Republicans were Tea Party Republicans—ultra conservatives who would not compromise but who intimidated other Republicans by threatening to run candidates against them in primary elections. The result was that the Tea Party Republicans—a minority of the minority could block almost any legislation and did. That Congress passed less legislation than any in American history including the “Do Nothing Congress” of the Truman era.
On that day, the Republican Majority in the House adopted a strategy to attach conditions to the normal budget process that they knew was unacceptable to the Senate and the President. The United States Government, the greatest nation on Earth, literally shut down all but the most essential services. What was worse is that the majority of the House of Representatives would pass a clean budget if they could vote on it. But the Tea Party Republicans blackmailed the Republican speaker that he would lose his speakership if he did not follow their strategy which was ironically controlled by a Republican Senator who had already lost on the issues they wanted in the Senate and in a Presidential election.
The Republicans who had control of the House of Representatives were reaching the end of the fiscal year and had not yet passed a budget nor expanded the debt ceiling so the government would have to shut down in a few days and a little later America could not pay any of its bills. They had a very strong position if they willing to blackmail the Democratically controlled Senate and the Democratic President. But the last time the Republicans had ever tried this before was the Republican House when Gingrich was speaker and they shut down the government for almost 3 weeks. It cost the Republicans the next election’s majority in the House. President Obama decided that he would not set a precedent of negotiating with a house of Congress that was threatening to shut down the government or threatening not to pay the nation’s bills which Congress had already authorized the purchase of.
The government was reopened when the more rational Republicans combined with the Democrats and voted the appropriations necessary to reopen the government.
As the Majority Leader of the House, Eric Cantor had to resolve conflicts and for coalitions that will compromise to get anything done. However, the Tea Party movement didn’t want any compromises even if it meant shutting down the government and defaulting on the national debt. They ran against conservative Republicans in the Republican primary elections campaigning that the incumbent made and facilitated compromises with Democrats. In some districts like Eric Cantor’s there were enough primary voters who agreed. Terry was explaining the message that the other conservative politicians received.
The President had cut some programs that were Congressional favorites:
James Ferguson Carney is a former White House press secretary to President Barack Obama. He served as press secretary from February 2011 through June 2014. For the first two years of Obama's presidency, Carney was director of communications for Vice President Joe Biden. Prior to his government service, Carney worked for 20 years at Time Magazine, and was the magazine's Washington bureau chief from 2005 to 2008. As a Washington-based reporter, Carney appeared frequently on various political talk shows, including This Week with George Stephanopoulos for ABC News.
