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Barack Obama Speaks from Maryland Construction Company; Debt Ceiling Could Impact Social Security Checks

Aired October 03, 2013 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Could happen in the next -- next half-hour, national parks, monuments, offices would all reopen immediately, benefits and services would resume again, hundreds of thousands of dedicated public servants who are worrying about whether they're going to be able to pay the mortgage or pay the car note, they'd start going back to work right away.

So my simple message today is: Call a vote. Call a vote. Put it on the floor and let every individual member of Congress make up their own minds. And they can show the American people, are you for a shutdown or not? If you're not for a shutdown, you'll vote for the bill. If you're for a shutdown, you won't vote for a bill.

We don't have to twist anybody's arms. But that way, the American people will be clear about who's responsible for the shutdown or, alternatively, more hopefully, they'd be clear that this is something that doesn't make sense and we should go ahead and make sure that we're looking out for the American people. It should be that simple.

But as I said, the problem we've got is that there's one faction of one party in one half of one branch of government that so far has refused to allow that yes-or-no vote unless they get some massive partisan concessions in exchange for doing what they're supposed to be doing anyway, in exchange for doing what everybody else agrees is necessary, and they won't agree to end the shutdown until they get their way.

And -- and you may think I'm exaggerating, but just the other day, one Tea Party Republican called the idea of a shutdown "wonderful." Another said that a shutdown is "exactly what we wanted." Well, they got exactly what they wanted. Now they're trying to figure out how to get out of it.

Just yesterday, one House Republican said -- I'm quoting here, all right, because I want to make sure people understand I didn't make this up -- one House Republican said, "We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this, and I don't know what that even is."

(LAUGHTER)

That was a quote! "We're not going to be disrespected. We've got to get something out of this, and I don't know what that even is." Think about that. You have already gotten the opportunity to serve the American people. There's no higher honor than that.

(APPLAUSE)

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 goody bag to go with it. What you get is our intelligence professionals being back on the job. What you get is our medical researchers back on the job. What you get are little kids back into Head Start.

(APPLAUSE)

What you get are our national parks and monuments open again. What you get is the economy not stalling, but continuing to grow. What you get are workers continuing to be hired. That's what you get. That's what you should be asking for. Take a vote, stop this farce, and end this shutdown right now.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: If you're being disrespected it's because of that attitude you've got, that you deserve to get something for doing your job.

Everybody here just does their job, right?

You know, if you're working here and in the middle of the day you just stopped and said, you know what, I want to get something but I don't know...

(LAUGHTER)

I don't know exactly what I'm going to get, but I'm just going to stop working until I get something, I'm going to -- I'm going to shut down the whole plant until I get something...

(UNKNOWN): You'd get fired.

OBAMA: ... you would get fired.

(APPLAUSE)

Right?

Because the deal is, you've already gotten hired, you've got a job, you're getting a paycheck and so you also are getting the pride of doing a good job and contributing to a business and looking out for your fellow workers. That's what you're getting. Well, it shouldn't be any different for a member of Congress.

Now, unlike past shutdowns, I want to make sure everybody understands this because, again, sometimes the tendency is to say, well, both sides are at fault. This one has nothing to do with deficits or spending or budgets. Our deficits are falling at the fastest pace in 60 years. We've cut the deficits in half since I took office.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And some of the things that the Republicans are asking for right now would actually add to our deficits. Seriously.

So this is not about spending, and this is not about fiscal responsibility. This whole thing is about one thing. The Republican obsessions with dismantling the Affordable Care Act and denying affordable health insurance to millions of Americans. That's all this has become about.

(APPLAUSE)

That seems to be the only thing that unites the Republican party these days. Through this whole fight, they've said the American people don't want Obamacare, so we should shut down the government to repeal it or delay it. But here's the problem. The government's now shut down, but the Affordable Care Act is still open for business.

(APPLAUSE)

So they're not even accomplishing what they say they want to accomplish, and by the way, in the first two days since the new marketplaces -- basically big group plans that we've set up -- first two days that they opened, websites where you can compare and purchase new affordable insurance plans, maybe get tax credits to reduce your cost, millions of Americans have made it clear they do want health insurance.

More than six million people visited the website healthcare.gov the day it opened. Nearly 200,000 people picked up the phone and called the call center. In Kentucky alone -- this is a state where I didn't win Kentucky.

(LAUGHTER)

So you know, I know they weren't doing it for me, in Kentucky, nearly 11,000 people applied for new insurance plans in the first two days, just in one state, Kentucky. And many Americans are finding out when they go on the website that they'll save a lot of money or get health insurance for the first time.

OBAMA: So my -- I would think that if in fact this was going to be such a disaster that the Republicans say it's going to be, that it was going to be so unpopular, they wouldn't have to shut down the government. They could wait; nobody'd show any interest. There'd be, like, two people on the website. And, you know, everybody would then vote for candidates who want to repeal it.

It's not as if Republicans haven't had a chance to debate the health care law. It passed the House of Representatives. It passed the Senate. The Supreme Court ruled it constitutional. You remember all this. Last November the voters rejected the presidential candidate that ran on a platform to repeal it.

(APPLAUSE)

So the Affordable Care Act has gone through every single democratic process, all three branches of government. It's the law of the land. It's here to stay.

I've said to Republicans, if there are specific things you think can improve the law to make it even better for people as opposed to just getting it and leaving 25 million people without health insurance, I'm happy to talk to you about that. But a Republican shutdown won't change the fact that millions of people need health insurance and that the Affordable Care Act is being implemented. The shutdown does not change that.

All a shutdown is doing is making it harder for ordinary Americans to get by and harder for businesses to create jobs at a time when our economy is just starting to gain traction again.

You've heard Republicans say that Obamacare will hurt the economy, but the economy's been growing and creating jobs. The single greatest threat to our economy and to our businesses like this one is not the Affordable Care Act. It's the unwillingness of Republicans in Congress to stop refighting a settled election or making the demands that have nothing to do with the budget. They need to move on to the actual business of governing.

OBAMA: That's what will help the economy. That's what will grow the economy. That's what will put people back to work.

(APPLAUSE)

And more than that, House Republicans need to stop careening from one crisis to another in everything they do. Have you noticed that? Since they -- since they've taken over the House of Representatives, we have one of these crises every three months. Have you noticed? And you keep on thinking, all right, well, this is going to be the last one. They're not going to do this again. And then they do it again.

I know you're tired of it. I'm tired of it. It doesn't mean that they're wrong on every single issue. I've said, I'm happy to negotiate with you on anything. I don't think any one party has a monopoly on wisdom. But you don't negotiate by putting a gun to the other person's head or, worse yet, by putting a gun to the American people's head by threatening a shutdown.

And by the way, even after Congress reopens your government, it's going to have to turn around very quickly and do something else, and that's pay America's bills. I want to spend a little time on this. It's called -- it's something called raising the debt ceiling, and it's got a lousy name, so a lot of people end up thinking, "I don't know, I don't think we should raise our debt ceiling," because it sounds like we're raising our debt.

But that's not what this is about. It doesn't cost taxpayers a single dime. It doesn't grow our deficits by a single dime. It doesn't allow anybody to spend any new money whatsoever. So it's not something that raises our debt. What it does is allow the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. government to pay the bills that Congress has already racked up.

I want you to think about this. If you go to a restaurant, you order a meal, you eat it, maybe you have some wine, maybe you have two glasses of wine, great meal, and then you look at the tab, it's pretty expensive, and you decide, "I'm not going to pay the bill."

Well, you're not saving money. You're not being frugal. You're just a deadbeat, right?

(LAUGHTER)

If you buy a house and you decide, "Man, this month, I'd rather go on vacation somewhere, so I'm not going to pay my mortgage," you didn't just save yourself some money. You're just going to get foreclosed on.

So you don't save money by not paying your bills. You don't reduce your debt by not paying your bills. All you're doing is making yourself unreliable and hurting your credit rating. And you'll start getting those phone calls and those notices in the mail. And the next time you try to borrow, somebody's going to say, "Uh-uh, because you don't pay your bills, you're a deadbeat."

Well, the same is true for countries. The only thing that the debt ceiling does is to let the U.S. Treasury pay for what Congress has already bought. That's why it's something that has been routine.

OBAMA: Traditionally it's not -- it's not a big deal. Congress has raised it 45 times since Ronald Reagan took office. This is just kind of a routine part of keeping the government running. The last time the House Republicans flirted with not raising the debt ceiling, back in 2011 -- some of you remember this -- our economy took a bad hit.

Our country's credit rating was downgraded for the first time, just like you'd be downgraded if you didn't pay your mortgage. This time, they are threatening to actually force the United States to default on its obligations for the very first time in history. Now, you'll hear John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and these other Republicans say, "We don't want to default."

But everybody knows -- it's written about in all the papers that their basic theory is, "OK, if the shutdown doesn't work, then we are going to try to get some extra concessions out of the president, we'll put like a long laundry list of all the things that we want that we can't get passed on our own, and if we don't get it, we'll tell them we don't -- we won't vote to pay the country's bills. We'll let the country default." I'm not just making this up. I mean, it's -- it's common knowledge. Every reporter here knows it.

And I want you to understand the consequences of this. As reckless as a government shutdown is, as many people as being -- as are being hurt by a government shutdown, an economic shutdown that results from default would be dramatically worse.

OBAMA: In a government shutdown, Social Security checks still go out on time. In an economic shutdown, if we don't raise the debt ceiling, they don't go out on time. In a government shutdown, disability benefits still arrive on time. In an economic shutdown, they don't. In a government shutdown, millions of Americans -- not just federal workers -- everybody faces real economic hardship.

In an economic shutdown, falling pensions and home values and rising interest rates on things like mortgages and student loans, all those things risk putting us back into a bad recession, which will affect this company and those workers and all of you.

That's not my analysis. That's every economist out there is saying the same thing. We have never done it before.

And, you know, the United States is the center of the world economy, so if we screw up, everybody gets screwed up. The whole world will have problems. Which is why generally nobody's ever thought to actually threaten not to pay our bills. It would be the height of irresponsibility.

And that's why I said this before. I'm going to repeat it.

There will be no negotiations over this.

(APPLAUSE)

The American people are not pawns in some political game.

You don't get to demand some ransom in exchange for keeping the government running.

You don't get to demand ransom in exchange for keeping the economy running.

You don't get to demand ransom for doing your most basic job.

And the sooner that the Republicans in Congress heed the warnings not just of me or Democrats like Chris and John, but heed the warnings of the Chamber of Commerce and CEOs and economists and a whole lot of Republicans outside of Congress. They're all saying, do not do this. They're all saying to Congress, do your job, and the sooner you do your job, the less damage you'll do to our economy and to businesses like this one.

So pass a budget, end the government shutdown, pay our bills, prevent an economic shutdown.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: Just vote and end the shutdown and you should do it today so we can get back to growing this economy, creating jobs and strengthening our middle class.

(APPLAUSE)

Let me close just by sharing a story I heard as I was getting ready to come here today. Many of you already know it.

Two years ago, a mulch factory next to in Luis' main equipment storage facility caught fire and most of the company's equipment was destroyed, causing millions of dollars of damage.

But even while the fire was still burning, dozens of employees rushed over to the facility and tried to save as much as they could. Some of you were probably there.

And when they finished cutting fire lines and spraying down the perimeter of their own property, they went over to help their neighbors. And afterwards, even though all the employees here at in Luis are on salary, even though the company had just taken a big financial hit, Cedelia (ph) and Natalia (ph) paid everyone overtime.

And along with each check, they included a personalized note saying just how much they had appreciated the efforts of the workers. And Cedelia (ph) said everybody says the biggest asset to a business is employees. Some people mean it, some people don't. We actually do.

So this company right here is full of folks who do right by each other. They don't try to see if they can work every angle. They don't lie about each other. They don't try to undermine each other. They understand they're supposed to be on the same team. You pitch in, you look out for one another.

OBAMA: When somebody gets knocked down, you help 'em back up. You don't ask what can you get out of this, 'cause you know that success doesn't depend on one of you. It depends on all of you working together.

Well, America's no different. I see that same spirit in so many cities and towns that I visit all across the country. It is alive and well all across the country. It's alive and well in this community, where restaurants and businesses are rallying around the regulars, and they're looking out for all the dedicated public servants who've been furloughed. You've been reading stories about restaurants who are saying, 'You know what? While -- while you're on furlough, come on, we'll give you a burger. We'll give you a meal. We'll help you out.'

That's the American ideal. Says we're working together, looking out for one another. Meeting our responsibilities. Doing our jobs. Thinking about future generations.

And that's why I believe, ultimately, reason and common sense will prevail. That -- that spirit at some point will infiltrate Washington, as well. Because I think the American people are so good and so decent they're gonna get better behavior from their government than this. And we'll once again make sure this is a country where you can make it if you try.

So thank you, everybody. God bless you. God bless the United States of America.

(END LIVE FEED)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: So there he is, the President of the United States in suburban Washington, D.C., Rockville, Maryland, a construction company there locally owned. The president making a very strong case urging Republicans, especially in the House of Representatives, to go ahead and pass legislation to reopen the government, also pass legislation to make sure the debt ceiling, October 17th, that debt ceiling is raised so the country does not default.

Let's go to Christine Romans. Christine, the Dow Jones as we have been watching the president speak and he's making the case, he said as reckless as a government shutdown is, an economic shutdown, meaning not raising the debt ceiling, would be dramatically worse.

The Dow Jones right now is down over 130 points. Set the scene for us, because just about an hour or so ago, officials at the treasury department also laid out a very dire scenario if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: They did, quite frankly. Senior administration officials saying, talking about a credit market squeeze, freeze like we saw in 2008, talking about interest rates spiking, making it more difficult for homeowners to borrow money, for anybody borrowing money, car loans, all that kind of stuff. Could be very difficult for companies to raise money. You're talking about a stock market that could be completely unhinged, and you're talking about a world economy that would be thrown off balance.

Treasury Department officials saying look, if you don't raise the debt ceiling and the U.S. is forced to not pay all of its bills, you're sending a signal that for the first time in history, America is not good on its word and that will be very, very dangerous. They say it could be as bad as 2008 or worse, the Great Depression.

They also say it's so difficult to quantify because we have never been here before. So, the president trying to lay this out. One thing I think is so interesting about this, when you talk about the United States Treasury being put in a position on November 1st when I think $67 billion in bills come due, do you pay Social Security, do you pay the $25 billion in Social Security that day or do you pay the interest on your debt?

So say you're going to pay your bankers, but you're not going to pay your seniors. What kind of signal does that send to Main Street. But wait, your seniors actually own a bunch of your debt, Social Security trust fund, all these big retirement programs, they have investments in treasuries so you're hurting Main Street no matter what you do. That's the position we're in right now. The president trying to really make that appeal that there's just one choice here and the choice is for Congress to just get this done. Wolf?

BLITZER: He specifically made the point in the speech and it was probably a point that resonated with a lot of the viewers out there, he said as far as a government shutdown is concerned, which is under way right now, Social Security recipients are receiving their checks on time. They're still getting their Social Security benefits. He did say if there's no debt ceiling increase, he said Social Security checks don't go out on time, and that will resonate pretty strongly with millions and millions of Americans out there. Hold on for a minute, Christine.

Brianna Keilar is our senior White House correspondent. She was watching very closely. Once again, the president said there will be no negotiations on this issue of raising the debt ceiling. He says that in virtually every appearance he makes and it's something the Republicans clearly don't want to hear.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No, they don't want to hear it. This is something they want to use as leverage. But that thing that you seized on there about Social Security checks, Wolf, I think is key. I think what you have seen here over the last day in this really fast-moving process and this debate going back and forth, which is really all about messaging right now and not negotiating, is that Republicans were making some sort of forward movement when it came to arguing for clinical trials.

We saw the leader in the Senate, Democratic Leader Harry Reid, make his comment yesterday about clinical trials and sick children not being funded and certainly his comments didn't go over very well.

This was President Obama throwing down a really big one, this was a big punch that he landed. I think a lot of folks were waiting for him to say this, because we hadn't heard this, and that is to alert senior citizens who, I will say, pay more attention to this than a lot of other groups of Americans listening to what would happen to their Social Security checks and you kind of see now, Wolf, that this is becoming this snowballing budget battle. We've gone from talking about the government shutdown to very much talking about the debt ceiling in earnest as all of this gets lumped together.

BLITZER: I know you will have a busy day. Christine Romans will have a busy day. We will all have a busy day as we watch what's going on. I'll be back 1:00 p.m. eastern, about an hour and a half from now, in the CNN NEWSROOM, later 5:00 p.m. eastern in "THE SITUATION ROOM."

Much more coming up: the breaking news we're following, the President of the United States laying down a new, new red line today as far as raising the nation's debt ceiling. Lots at stake over the next two weeks. Forget about the government shutdown. He says that's awful, but if you don't raise the debt ceiling, the country could go into a deep, deep recession.

We'll take a quick break. Much more of the breaking news. Ashleigh Banfield will pick up our coverage right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. Welcome to "LEGAL VIEW." I'm Ashleigh Banfield. It's Thursday, October 3rd.

We just saw President Obama in a very familiar situation, making his case to the people when he hits a brick wall with Congress.

The president spoke at a construction company in Maryland in the suburbs there, just hours after his first face-to-face meeting with congressional leaders since this shutdown began on Tuesday. Jovial crowd there, jovial president, but make no mistake those leaders and the president talked about the funding gap and the looming government debt crisis, and from all indications their accomplishment a big, fat nothing.