Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–September 30, 2013 – 1:31 P.M. EDT
MR. CARNEY: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your patience. Of course, I wanted to make sure that you heard the President’s remarks at the end of his bilateral meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, Prime Minister Netanyahu, at which, in addition to his comments about the meeting, about our relationship with Israel, our unshakeable support for Israel’s security, the discussion the two leaders had about Syria and Iran and the Middle East peace process, among other things, the President took a question and answered it about the fact that as of now, it is up to the House of Representatives to decide whether or not they want to shut down the government in order to make an ideological point, or whether they will follow the Senate’s lead and pass an extension of government funding at current levels for a number of weeks so that we can get about the business of discussing and negotiating a long-term budget agreement.
With that, I will take your questions.
Q Can you talk a little bit more about what the President just said about having conversations with leaders on the Hill? Did that include Speaker Boehner? And is he making any progress in these talks for averting a shutdown?
MR. CARNEY: I think the President said what we’ve said, which is that you can expect that he will be having conversations with leaders on the Hill, as he has in the past. And I assume that would include the Speaker of the House.
The point I think, though, is that we are at a moment where the House of Representatives has to decide, and the Speaker of the House, as the leader of the House and the leader of House Republicans, must decide whether roughly 60 members of his caucus, the tea party faction, will dictate to the American people whether the government will shut down because they have not been able to achieve through normal means their ideological agenda, which is to repeal and do away with in some manner or other the Affordable Care Act — the irony, of course, being that tomorrow enrollment begins in the Affordable Care Act, and millions of Americans for whom access to affordable insurance has been but a dream, there will be the opportunity to enroll in the Affordable Care Act through the exchanges and the marketplaces and receive, come January 1st, affordable health insurance for the first time.
And that’s going to happen. Nothing will alter that. That will happen.
Q A couple follows to that. Can you say whether he’s spoken yet to Speaker Boehner?
MR. CARNEY: I don’t have any other conversations or new conversations to read out. I think what the President indicated is that he expects that he will, of course, speak with leaders in the coming days.
Again, there’s nothing here to debate. The President has made clear all year long that he is willing and eager to negotiate over our budget priorities and to reach a common-sense solution to funding our government. That’s what his budget was about, which many of you wrote about and correctly assessed to represent a compromise. And we have encouraged Republicans to show the same willingness to compromise all year long, and the President has met with many members of Congress of the Republican Party over the course of the year to have those discussions.
What he will not do is go along with the idea that the government should be shut down over this desire to unwind history and achieve through threat and extortion what Republicans couldn’t do through the legislative process or through the election process. It’s just not fair to the American people, and it’s not fair to the millions of Americans who will have access to affordable health insurance for the first time.
Q Would the President veto a continued resolution that only included a provision killing the medical device tax?
MR. CARNEY: We have said that’s — none of this is acceptable. This is just a blatant extortion. And the irony about it is — the Republicans will tell you — the Republicans who support this extortion game or extortion racket will tell you that, oh, well, that’s compromise; we just want you to do this on the Affordable Care Act, and chip away at it here or delay there. And yet, they’ll all also tell you quite clearly that the goal — the ultimate goal and purpose of this is to do away with the Affordable Care Act, so take away all those benefits for millions of Americans, and increase the deficit dramatically while doing it — something they never mention.
But in the end, they want to do that for a continuing resolution that will fund the government for 45 days? 60 days? What comes next? What will they demand next? I mean, part of it was they want everybody’s boss to be able to tell them — to tell every woman in America whether or not they can get contraceptive coverage. They want to attach that to this debate.
This is not, as others have said, this is not the way Congress ought to operate, and it’s irresponsible and reckless to hold the functioning of the government hostage to these ideological imperatives.
Q Given that there’s no sign of any movement, Jay, isn’t a shutdown inevitable this evening?
MR. CARNEY: Well, the President said just now, and I certainly agree with him, that, no, that he is not resigned to a shutdown, because there’s an avenue open to the House, after the Senate does what we expect, which is send back to the House a clean CR that just continues funding the government at current levels. It contains no concessions to the democratic agenda or the President’s agenda. It just continues funding the government at current levels for a number of weeks in order to allow for the negotiations the President is eager to engage in. That’s the responsible thing to do.
The irresponsible thing to do is to attach a bunch of political ideological demands to this simple proposition of funding the government and not shutting it down, and say you’ll shut it down if you don’t get what you want.
Q But you’re not detecting any signs of any movement?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I used to walk the halls of Congress as a reporter and, back then, knew a lot more about the minute-by-minute developments. In fact, I did that during the last government shutdown here in ’95 and up there in ’96. But I leave it to your colleagues to tell me more precisely what the thinking of the House Republican leadership is.
Q How will a shutdown affect White House staffing?
MR. CARNEY: Well, the White House, like other agencies within government, is affected. There will be reductions in staff. We’ll have a skeletal staff. There’s obviously essential staff that’s exempted — or excepted, which I think is the proper term. And that’s true in other areas. But it will be an extremely lean operation if this comes to pass.
Q And lastly, will he go on this trip to Asia this weekend?
MR. CARNEY: We don’t have any changes to announce. We plan to make this trip. The President, as President, looks forward to and believes it is important to travel to Asia in order to promote our economic interests in Asia and our strategic interests in Asia. There are American jobs that can be created through our engagement with Asia, the fastest-growing region of the world and an enormously important region when it comes to our trading relationships and partnerships.
So we have this trip scheduled and we intend to take it. We’ll see, obviously, what happens as the week unfolds.
Let me move around a little bit if I may. April.
Q I want to follow up on what Steve said. You said there will be a skeletal staff and a lean operation indeed if the shutdown happened. Could you get into the breakdown? Could you give us numbers?
MR. CARNEY: I would refer you to the Office of Management and Budget, which handles all of these specifics and can give you more information about how it breaks down. But those of you who know if you’re as old as I am and remember what it was like in the mid ‘90s, and remember also what you reported just when there was at least the potential of a shutdown, there are significant reductions in staff and furloughs that take place here, as elsewhere, if a shutdown occurs.
Q And that staff that will be not coming in or furloughed will not be paid, correct?
MR. CARNEY: Again, that’s my understanding. But I hesitate to answer these kind of technical questions because there are far better sources for that specific information.
Q And understanding that today that even the White House is trying to still parse through all the technicalities of the effects on the White House from a shutdown — is that the case? If so, could you talk to us about some of the things that you’re dealing with it?
MR. CARNEY: Look, here’s the thing. There are effects here and there are effects throughout the government. But those pale in comparison to the effects and impacts that a shutdown would have on women and children and seniors.
Shortly after a shutdown, if it were to occur, federal funding for the Women, Infants and Children program may not be sufficient to cover benefits, and agencies may have to cut off services to mothers and young children.
Senior nutrition grants, which help approximately 2.5 million seniors annually — help them remain healthy and independent by providing meals and related services — would not be funded.
Programs that our nation’s veterans depend on would be affected. For example, veterans’ call centers and regional offices would be closed immediately, effective immediately. So those services that help veterans understand their benefits, including call centers, hotlines and regional offices, would be closed. Vocational rehabilitation and education counseling for veterans would be limited. Veterans’ business support centers would be immediately closed. And should a lapse extend through late October, compensation, pension, education and other veterans’ benefits would be cut off.
Important research and consumer safety programs would be halted in the event of a shutdown, including research into life-threatening diseases. Work to protect consumers, ranging from child product safety to financial security, to the safety of hazardous waste facilities would cease.
The Sandy recovery efforts, the West, Texas investigation and other fire and emergency response grants would be halted. And on that, I just want to point out that when it comes to disaster — emergency disaster relief, there is the fund that is operational. So should there be a disaster, there would be funding available for initial and immediate emergency relief. But what would be affected by a shutdown are the ongoing Sandy recovery efforts and the investigation into the explosion in West, Texas, and the like.
So those are the impacts and effects that matter. We, like every other agency, would be affected, but it’s folks out in the country who will be affected that concerns us most.
Q Jay, thank you for that information. But, again, how will the President plan to go to Asia if there’s a schedule — skeleton crew and a lean operation here? And then, also, how is ASEAN affected —
MR. CARNEY: Again, the President said today, not long ago, that he is not resigned to the idea that the government will shut down. He remains hopeful that the House will come to the reasonable decision that it is appropriate to simply extend funding of the government further for several weeks in order to allow for the kind of negotiations that they claim they want about our budget priorities. So he remains hopeful, at least not resigned, to the fact of a shutdown.
And when it comes to the mechanics of the trip and the people and equipment that gets positioned abroad for a trip like this, I just would have to refer you to OMB or to the agencies involved — Department of Defense, Secret Service.
Q Jay, one of the other proposals floating around up on Capitol Hill would be a really, really short-term CR, something along the lines of a week, to keep the government running. You, from this podium in the past, have described that as sort of “tollbooth government,” or even these continuing resolutions as “tollbooth government.” Wouldn’t a one-week CR be sort of the ultimate tollbooth government?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I’m not going to respond to ideas floating around the Hill. There are tons of them, and we could respond all day to them. Right now, the option available, as I understand it, to the House, to the Speaker, will be the opportunity to follow the Senate’s lead in funding the government for a number of weeks in a clean continuing resolution. And we would support that.
This process, again, has been one where a small faction, a very extreme faction of Republicans in the House has essentially forced its leadership to go along with a proposition that it is better to shut down the government, with all of the negative effects that we’ve talked about, and better perhaps to default on our obligations for the first time in history than to allow a law that was passed and signed and upheld by the Supreme Court to be implemented — a law that would provide millions of Americans who do not have insurance access to affordable insurance.
And one might surmise that the extreme agita that you see among Republicans right now over the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare is a direct result of the fact that, beginning tomorrow, there is a concrete development that means that millions of Americans will, for the first time, be able to sign up for that health insurance. And as I think I’ve seen Republicans say, it will be a lot harder to get rid of Obamacare once these individuals who have had a hard time getting affordable health care are able to see the benefits of the Affordable Care Act provides to them.
Q The White House might be open to a one-week CR —
MR. CARNEY: Again, I’m not going to negotiate ideas that are floated to me from any row of this briefing room, except to say that we don’t think extraneous political agenda items ought to be — well, maybe from the front — (laughter) — I think I’ll just make it a blanket opposition to that.
But let me just say that Congress ought to do its job. It only has a few absolute functions, and one of them is to ensure that the government and its essential operations are funded. Another is to ensure that the United States pays its bills, as it has throughout the entire history of the nation.
Q And, Jay, let me just follow up real quick. In the last couple of weeks, Democrats, including the President, have
— and he has not used all of these words, but I’ll throw out some of them that have been used — have referred to Republicans as “arsonists,” “anarchists,” “extortionists, “blackmailers” —
MR. CARNEY: I think I just said extortion and — yes.
Q — “hostage-takers.” Dan Pfeiffer talked about bombs being strapped to chests. (Laughter.) It almost sounds as if this White House is trying to taunt Republicans into shutting the government down.
MR. CARNEY: Well, that’s certainly not the case. I mean, as I think I just saw my colleague, Dan Pfeiffer, on CNN’s air not long ago say that I think it was Mitch McConnell who, in the iteration of these negotiations — similar ones two years ago — who referred to the economy being a hostage that they could take in negotiations with the President. So I don’t think this is language that either side has exclusive rights to or has only used in the past.
But here are the facts. When it comes to funding the government or when it comes to paying our debts, the Democrats and the President, on one hand, are asking for nothing — no concessions, no ideological riders, no special pet projects, no political gotcha items — in exchange for the simple extension of government funding, in exchange for Congress ensuring that we do not default.
Republicans, on the other hand, are attaching — in the concrete bills that they’ve passed and in their imaginations anyway when they talk about what they’d like to attach — all sort of political agenda items, some of them wildly inconsistent with where the American people want the country to move. And that includes issues that are wholly unrelated to the budget and wholly unrelated to the debt and the deficits that we must manage, and the responsibility of Congress to ensure that we don’t default.
Q Two questions, Jay, one following on Jim. This is no longer such a hypothetical — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has hot-lined a one-week CR in the Senate within the last few minutes, maybe hour. So it looks like there’s some movement on that on Capitol Hill. And you said that Congress has the responsibility to keep the government funded. I wonder, would the President sign a one-week CR?
MR. CARNEY: Well, you just mentioned this happened in the last couple minutes, so I’m not going to give you a statement of administration policy except to say that it has long been our position that Congress ought to make sure that the government doesn’t shut down, and they ought not to attach to their responsibility to ensure that the government doesn’t shut down any ideological poison pills or any agenda items that they can’t achieve through the normal process.
But we’ll have to see what Congress does. There’s a lot of movement in Congress that doesn’t result in actual action.
Q And on the Affordable Care Act, will the President be doing anything tomorrow to promote the rollout, and can you talk a little bit about what the White House is going to be doing, broadly?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I don’t have any information at this time for you on the President’s schedule tomorrow. It is certainly the case — and I appreciate you bringing it up — that the Department of Health and Human Services and others are engaged in preparing for tomorrow’s opening day of enrollment and there’s a lot of activity around that. And it will be the first day of the six-month open enrollment period for individuals to basically shop for health insurance in a way that they’ve never been able to before, and for so many of them to have options available to them at affordable prices that they’ve never had before.
And we expect that when those marketplaces open and the exchanges open and you can, as a consumer, review your options either online or through the telephone call centers, there will be a lot of window-shopping, a lot of people will assess what’s available to them, and then, as time passes and we move closer to January 4th, more and more of the millions of Americans who have this option available to them will take advantage of it. And that will be a very good thing, indeed.
Jon Karl.
Q Jay, are these briefings essential? Will you continue to brief in the middle of a shutdown?
MR. CARNEY: We obviously believe it’s important that the American people be apprised of what’s happening here at the White House, and we will endeavor to provide that information as best we can with a skeletal staff.
Q Are you confident that this will be a political disaster for Republicans if there’s a shutdown?
MR. CARNEY: I wouldn’t make any kind of predictions. And that suggests that we’re looking for an outcome — I’m not. I don’t know, and honestly, I think it’s important to know that we don’t care about the politics of this. The President cares about making sure that the American people aren’t hurt by it.
Because we talked about this with regards to the comprehensive immigration reform legislation that passed with a strong bipartisan majority in the Senate, and there were some question about whether secretly we didn’t hope that the Republicans in the House would block it because it would be bad
— continued bad news for the Republicans when it came to their ever-worsening relations with Hispanic Americans across the country. And the answer is, no. We would love them to take advantage of the political opportunities available to them by passing comprehensive immigration reform and maybe improving their standing among Hispanic Americans by doing it.
And we would love for Republicans to do the right thing and maybe improve their standing among the American people, and Congress’s standing among the American people, by simply not shutting down the government and not defaulting on our obligations.
Q So just to go through very quickly some of what the Republicans are demanding and what’s negotiable and what’s not. The debt ceiling — nothing there negotiable, right?
MR. CARNEY: Correct.
Q The idea of repealing the health care law — obviously not negotiable. Delaying the health care law for a year?
MR. CARNEY: No.
Q Not negotiable?
MR. CARNEY: First of all, the answer is, no. And nothing is negotiable when it comes to the debt ceiling.
And as the President said recently when it comes to extending the government, he’s willing to talk about ways to improve the health care law if Republicans are interested in that. After all, a lot of the Affordable Care Act is designed — its essential elements were designed by Republicans. And I believe that there are Republicans out there who probably earnestly have some good ideas, although they’re most likely afraid to talk about them in party circles.
But the President is eager to do that. What he is not willing to do is have those negotiations under the threat of shutting down the government, and certainly not under the threat of defaulting on our obligations.
Q Is the idea of delaying this tax or of cutting this tax on medical devices also non-negotiable?
MR. CARNEY: No, I answered that with Nedra that that’s not — look, Congress has throughout its time in session the opportunity to consider and pass legislation, to try to get majorities big enough in both houses to achieve a compromise between the House and the Senate and send it to the President. That’s the way it is supposed to work.
And as you know, the House Republicans in particular have done little else over the past couple of years than attempt to legislate ways that either defund or repeal or in other ways negatively effect the Affordable Care Act. So they can certainly endeavor to keep doing that. But to have that attached to the simple responsibility to fund the government, it’s just not acceptable.
Q So is the reason why we’ve seen really no negotiations going on because basically everything the Republicans have put out there is non-negotiable? Right?
MR. CARNEY: That’s not a — here’s it is. It is not a concession to keep the government open. It is not a concession to pay America’s bills. That is a responsibility. And as I emailed with a reporter out here, it is enshrined in the Constitution that Congress has the power to pay debts; Congress has the power to authorize funding. If it were otherwise, the President would go about it and there would be no drama and no delay.
