Bill Clinton: Obama Can’t Negotiate With GOP on Debt Ceiling, Shutdown

The former president knocks Republicans for insisting on health care law delay

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Former President Bill Clinton, who successfully outmaneuvered Republicans over a government shutdown in the 1990s, said Sunday that President Barack Obama is right not to give ground to the GOP this time around.

Clinton, knocking Republicans for using the threat of a shutting down the government or not increasing the debt limit  to delay Obama’s health care reform law, said on ABC’s This Week that “the current price of stopping [a shutdown] is higher than the price of letting the Republicans do it and taking their medicine.”

The House passed a bill Saturday night that would continue to fund the government, while also delaying implementation of the health law for a year. The measure is dead on arrival in the Senate, and Obama has promised to veto it if passed anyway.

“You can’t negotiate over that,” Clinton said. “And I think he’s right not to.”

Barring a last-minute deal, funding for most government operations expires at midnight on Tuesday. The nation is scheduled to reach its borrowing limit next month.