Talking Points Memo is reporting that President Obama expressed his frustration with congressional Republicans on their failure so far to reach a budget compromise that would avert a government shutdown by the end of the week, instructing them to start acting like "grown-ups" and to stop playing political games.
"We don't have time for games," he told reporters during a rare appearance in the White House briefing room. "We don't have time to score political points."
Obama, who met with Republican and Democratic leaders at the White House Tuesday, said he would make himself available to meet again Wednesday and Thursday if lawmakers could not come to some consensus today. He also criticized Republicans for saying they don't agree to the $33 billion in cuts that Democrats have agreed to and for including extraneous politically motivated policy riders.
"What we can't do is have a 'my way or the highway' approach to this problem," he said. "If we start applying that approach, that we can't get 110 percent of everything we want, then we're not going to get anything done this year."
As of late last week, House Republican and Senate Democratic leaders appeared to be close to a budget deal that would prevent a government shutdown, but on Monday and again Tuesday, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) balked and appeared to up the ante in the spending standoff.
Republicans can keep playing games if they want, and the Tea Party can keep pushing an ideological agenda, as opposed to one based on what is best for the entire country, and see what happens. Really, the Democrats have cut the agreed-upon amount of money from the budget, but the Tea Party wants the cuts to come from other areas, like public schools, public broadcasting, Medicare and climate control, so they're not on board.
Yeah, that's mature. What kind of sense does that make? We guess the Tea Party hasn't heard that those who play games "don't get got." We suspect they'll find out in the next election cycle.
Read more at TPM.
In other news: Debbie Wasserman Shultz to Head DNC.
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