President Barack Obama told House Speaker John Boehner to “hold a vote. Call a vote right now. Let’s see what happens,” after the Republican leader said a funding bill doesn’t have enough support. Obama’s comments came after he essentially accused Boehner of political brinkmanship.
“The truth of matter is, there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives right now to end this shutdown immediately with no partisan strings attached. The House should hold that vote today,” Obama said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Speaking at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Obama called on House Republicans to put up a “clean” government spending bill on Monday amid several days of a government shutdown.
“If Republicans and Speaker Boehner are saying there aren’t enough votes, then they should prove it,” he added, reported NBC News. “Let the bill go to the floor and let’s see what happens. Just vote.”
Obama added that if “Boehner says there are not enough votes, then they should prove it.”
“Let the bill go to the floor and lets see what happens. Just vote. Let every member of Congress vote their conscience and they can determine whether or not they want to shut the government down,” he said, according to the Huffington Post.
On Sunday’s “This Week” on ABC, Boehner said that the House did not have enough votes to pass a resolution.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Obama blamed Boehner for the shutdown. “We can vote to open the government today,” he said.
“We know that there are enough members in the House of Representatives -- Democrats and Republicans -- who are prepared to vote to reopen the government today. The only thing that is keeping that from happening is Speaker Boehner has made a decision that he is going to hold out to see if he can get additional concessions from us,” the president added.
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