President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the government funding impasse at M. Luis Construction, a local small business in Rockville, Maryland, near Washington, October 3, 2013.
President Barack Obama on Thursday mocked a Republican lawmaker who said the party needs to “get something” out of the ongoing government shutdown but that he doesn’t “know what.”
“Think about that,” Obama said after quoting the lawmaker during a campaign-style event at a construction company in Rockville, Md. “You have already gotten the opportunity to serve the American people. There’s no higher honor than that. You’ve already gotten the opportunity to help businesses like this one, workers like these. So the American people aren’t in the mood to give you a goodie bag to go with it.”
Obama was rebutting Indiana Republican Rep. Marlin Stutzman, who said Wednesday that “we’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”
The White House organized the event to highlight the economic costs of the partial shutdown, now in its third day. Obama, repeatedly calling it a “reckless and damaging Republican shutdown,” reiterated his call for House Speaker John Boehner to allow a vote on a measure to reopen and fund the government without gutting the health care reform law.
“Call a vote,” Obama said. “Take a vote, stop this farce, and end this shutdown right now.”
And looking forward to the looming need to raise the debt ceiling, Obama said the repercussions would be global if Congress failed to do so.
“If we screw up, everybody else gets screwed up,” he said.