Enough votes to end US govt shutdown immediately, says Obama

Washington: President Barack Obama today said that there are enough votes in the US House of Representatives - or the lower house of the Congress - to end the government shutdown, which is now into its second week. “I heard over the weekend was this notion that Congress doesn’t have the capacity to end this shutdown. The truth of the matter is, there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives right now to end the shutdown immediately with no partisan strings attached,” he said. [caption id=“attachment_1158905” align=“alignright” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] Obama was referring to the statement made by John Boehner, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, that he does not have enough votes to end the government shutdown. “The House should hold that vote today. If Republicans and Speaker Boehner is saying there are not enough votes, then they should prove it. Let the bill go to the floor, and let’s see what happens. Just vote. Let every member of Congress vote their conscience. They can determine whether or not they want to shut the government down,” Obama said. “My suspicion is, my very strong suspicion, is that there are enough votes there. And the reason that Speaker Boehner hasn’t called a vote on it is because he’s doesn’t, apparently, want to see the government shutdown end at the moment unless he’s able to extract concessions that don’t have anything to do with the budget,” he said. The American people simply want government to work, Obama said, adding that there’s no reason that there has to be a shutdown in order for the kinds of negotiations Boehner says he wants to proceed. “Hold a vote. Call a vote right now, and let’s see what happens,” he said. The White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, said the President is open to negotiation all year long, and remains so today. “He is ready to do that, just not under threat of shutdown, not under threat of default. Those are fundamental core responsibilities of Congress that they need to fulfill. And he won’t, allow the American people and the American economy to be held hostage to ideological demands in return for fulfilling those simple functions,” he said. “When it comes to putting a bill on the floor of the House, which the speaker could do today, to reopen the government - because apparently everyone but the speaker is confident that that bill would receive a majority in the House and would receive votes from Republicans as well as Democrats - that would be simply extending government funding at levels that Republicans set,” Carney said. PTI