Obama: Failure to raise debt limit would 'cause economic chaos'

1/12

Though Washington, D.C., has refused to cut services to the degree seen in previous shutdowns, Mayor Vincent Gray issued a letter Tuesday warning that “time is running out -- and, soon, I will have exhausted every resource available to me to protect our residents, our workers, and our visitors.” (Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)

2/12

It took a salmonella outbreak to prompt the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to bring back nearly all of its furloughed food monitors Tuesday, after 278 cases were reported across 18 states, including California. The Food and Drug Administration’s food-safety programs have also been curtailed, with the agency furloughing about half of its employees. (Jordan Kartholl / Associated Press)

3/12

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which receives its funding through the U.S. Department of Transportation, has significantly cut its safety programs, including issuing recalls, testing safety ratings and reviewing complaints. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)

4/12

Though food stamps continue to be distributed during the shutdown, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children has been defunded. The program, which aids in providing food and healthcare to low-income mothers and their children, is estimated by the USDA to have sufficient funding for about a week before running out entirely. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

5/12

The early education program Head Start has stated that up to 19,000 children are left without its services during the shutdown, since the grant money required to maintain 23 programs in 11 states has been cut off. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

6/12

About 200 patients will be turned away from clinical trials each week the government is shut down, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins confirmed. Thirty of those patients are children, many of whom are suffering from cancer. Above, Lakers Forward Matt Barnes chatting with Allie Newman, 16 during visits with young patients at the Mattel’s Children Hospital. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

7/12

The Miramar Marine Corps Air Show, planned for this weekend, is among the most heavily attended air shows in the country with about 500,000 attendees taking part over the last several years. But not even a huge audience could save the show from the government shutdown, with Marine officials confirming Thursday that the event has been canceled. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

8/12

Members of Congress may continue to be paid during this shutdown of their own making, but at least some of the legislative body’s perks are at least cut off. The congressional private dining room has been shut down, as have its shoe shining service, gym and dry cleaner. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

9/12

The National Zoo’s much-watched Panda Cam, set up to monitor Tian Tian, Mei Xiang and the yet unnamed new cub, went dark Monday night. Now all that panda devotees can spot is an error message, though the pandas will still be cared for by essential Smithsonian staff. (Smithsonian National Zoo / Associated Press)

10/12

NASA’s various social media outreach initiatives have gained a huge number of followers, and many of them are being shut down alongside the government. The popular Asteroid Watch Twitter account freaked out followers with a message that it would no longer be updated, though it later clarified that doesn’t mean the agency is turning a blind eye to the skies. And some, like the agency’s Voyager 2 space probe, were a bit more snarky in their closure announcement. NASA’s Instagram account and NASA.gov are also shut down. (NASA / Getty Images)

11/12

Hopefully you aren’t working on a research paper depending on federal statistics during the shutdown, since many sites, including Census.gov, Data.gov, THOMAS (a database of legislative information) and the Federal Trade Commission, are either limited or shut down entirely until Congress agrees to a compromise. (Library of Congress / Los Angeles Times)

12/12

Want to stop by the Capitol for a tour as Congress tries to hash out a deal? Pop by the National Zoo while on furlough? Camp out in Yosemite to celebrate its 123rd birthday? Try again later, since all but a few of the nation’s federal tourist attractions, including Smithsonian museums and the State of Liberty are shuttered. (Emmanuel Dundand / AFP/Getty Images)

By David Lauter and Kathleen Hennessey

Oct. 8, 2013 1:12 PM PT

WASHINGTON — Failure by Congress to raise the nation’s debt ceiling would “cause economic chaos,” President Obama warned as he pressed House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to allow votes to reopen government agencies and allow the Treasury to continue borrowing to pay the nation’s bills.

Allowing the government to default would be “insane, catastrophic, chaos,” Obama said during an hourlong news conference, quoting language that he attributed to business leaders.

Obama said he would sign even a short-term measures that would restore government funding and raise the debt limit, giving lawmakers more time to negotiate.

FULL COVERAGE: The U.S. government shutdown

Despite that gesture, the president used strident language toward the Republicans who would be sitting at the table with him. Obama repeatedly referred to the GOP tactics in the budget standoff as demands for “ransom” and “hostage taking.”

“We can’t make extortion routine,” he said at one point, and at another referred to Republicans who have downplayed the risk of a default as “out of touch with reality.”

The news conference came as Senate Democratic leaders were honing plans to bring a bill to the floor later this week that would raise the debt ceiling. The Democratic strategy appears to be to pass such a bill in the Senate then hope that pressure from financial markets and negative polls will force the Republican-controlled House to follow suit next week as the deadline to raise the ceiling approaches.

To overcome a potential Republican filibuster, the measure would need 60 votes, which would require at least six Republicans to vote with the 54 Democrats. Several Republicans have indicated they would vote with the Democrats on the issue, but it remains unclear whether the 60 votes can be rounded up.

Obama also insisted that “no magic bullet” exists for avoiding the need to raise the debt ceiling, brushing aside arguments by some legal scholars that the president could use emergency powers to pay some bills and not others.

The Treasury Department has said Congress needs to raise the debt limit by Oct. 17 to avoid the risk of a default, although the actual point at which the government would stop paying bills is probably several days later.

Earlier in the day Obama spoke by phone with Boehner, and House leaders discussed a proposal with their members to create a bipartisan group that could negotiate a long-term solution to the budget standoff.

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The idea caused immediate comparisons to the ill-fated “super committee” that formed a key part of the solution to the last big standoff over the debt limit, in the summer of 2011. That panel led nowhere, so Republican leaders took pains to insist that their current idea was not a repeat. But creation of a complicated process that can allow elected officials to compromise without appearing to do so is a long-standing Washington mechanism for getting out of political jams.

In the phone call, Obama repeated previous statements that he would negotiate with Republicans over the budget, but only after they have voted to reopen government agencies and raise the nation’s debt limit.

Republicans stuck to their talking points as well, with Boehner’s spokesman characterizing Obama’s message as intransigent. “The president called the speaker again today to reiterate that he won’t negotiate on a government funding bill or debt limit increase,” spokesman Brendan Buck said in a statement.

Obama and congressional Democrats say that if Boehner would allow the House to take an up-or-down vote on reopening government agencies, the measure would pass. Public statements from members of the House suggest that is true. Enough Republicans have gone on the record saying they would vote in favor of a budget bill without strings attached -- a “clean continuing resolution,” as the Washington jargon calls it -- to combine with Democrats to produce a majority.

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Boehner so far has not been willing to allow such a vote, knowing that doing so would cause a revolt among the House’s most conservative members and further splinter an already divided Republican caucus. But he’s come under increasing pressure from party strategists who fear that refusing to allow such a vote will deepen public dismay over GOP tactics.

Recent polls have shown the public increasingly blaming the GOP, not Obama, for the standoff. Longtime Republican operatives have been going public with their worries that the current strategy is hurting the party’s prospects in the 2014 elections. Republican chances of gaining control of the Senate are at risk as are at least some GOP seats in the House.

Refusing to allow an up-or-down vote is “politically untenable,” Ed Rogers, a former Republican White House official and long-time party strategist, wrote in a blog post Tuesday. The GOP has “entered the danger zone,” he said.

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Twitter: @DavidLauter

david.lauter@latimes.com

Twitter: @khennessey

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com