I am eager to take your questions,

so I'll try to be brief at the top.

This morning, I had a chance to speak with Speaker Boehner,

and I told him what I've been saying publicly,

that I am happy to talk with him

and other Republicans about anything --

not just issues I think are important,

but also issues that they think are important.

But I also told him that having such a conversation,

talks, negotiations,

shouldn't require hanging the threats of a government shutdown

or economic chaos over the heads of the American people.

Think about it this way.

The American people do not get to demand a ransom

for doing their jobs.

You don't get a chance to call your bank and say,

"I'm not going to pay my mortgage this month

unless you throw in a new car and an Xbox.

If you're in negotiations around buying somebody's house,

you don't get to say, "Well, let's talk

about the price I'm going to pay,

and if you don't give me the price

then I'm going to burn down your house."

That's not how negotiations work.

That's not how it happens in business;

it's not how it happens in private life.

In the same way, members of Congress --

and the House Republicans, in particular --

don't get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their jobs.

And two of their very basic jobs are passing a budget

and making sure that America is paying its bills.

They don't also get to say,

"Unless you give me

what the voters rejected in the last election,

I'm going to cause a recession."

That's not how it works.

No American President would deal with a foreign leader like this.

Most of you would not deal with either coworkers

or business associates in this fashion,

and we shouldn't be dealing this way here in Washington.

And I've heard Republicans suggest that, well, no,

this is reasonable, this is entirely appropriate.

But as I've said before, imagine if a Democratic Congress

threatened to crash the global economy

unless a Republican President agreed to gun background checks

or immigration reform?

I think it's fair to say that Republicans

would not think that was appropriate.

So let's lift these threats from our families and our businesses,

and let's get down to work.

It's not like this is a new position that I'm taking here.

I had Speaker Boehner and the other leaders in just last week.

Either my Chief of Staff or I have had serious conversations

on the budget with Republicans more than 20 times since March.

So we've been talking all kinds of business.

What we haven't been able to get are serious positions

from the Republicans that would allow us to actually resolve

some core differences.

And they have decided to run out the clock

until there's a government shutdown

or the possibility of default,

thinking that it would give them more leverage.

That's not my characterization; they've said it themselves.

That was their strategy from the start.

And that is not how our government is supposed to run.

It's not just me, by the way, who has taken the position

that we're willing to have conversations about anything.

Senate Democrats have asked to sit down with House Republicans

and hash out a budget, but have been rejected

by the House Republicans 19 times.

At the beginning of this year, Speaker Boehner said,

what we want is regular order and a serious budget process,

so the Senate should pass a bill

and the House should pass a bill.

And then, a committee comes together

and they hash out their differences,

and they send a bill to the President.

Well, that's exactly what Democrats did.

Except somewhere along the way,

House Republicans decided they wouldn't appoint people

to the committee to try to negotiate.

And 19 times, they've rejected that.

So even after all that, the Democrats in the Senate

still passed a budget

that effectively reflects Republican priorities,

at Republican budget levels,

just to keep the government open.

And the House Republicans couldn't do that either.

The point is I think not only the White House,

but also Democrats in the Senate and Democrats in the House

have shown more than ample willingness

to talk about any issues

that the Republicans are concerned about.

But we can't do it if the entire basis

of the Republican strategy is,

we're going to shut down the government

or cause economic chaos

if we don't get 100 percent of what we want.

So my suggestion to the Speaker has been and will continue to be

let's stop the excuses.

Let's take a vote in the House.

Let's end this shutdown right now.

Let's put people back to work.

There are enough reasonable Republicans and Democrats

in the House who are willing to vote yes on a budget

that the Senate has already passed.

That vote could take place today.

The shutdown would be over.

Then, serious negotiations could proceed

around every item in the budget.

Now, as soon as Congress votes to reopen the government,

it's also got to vote to meet our country's commitments --

pay our bills; raise the debt ceiling.

Because as reckless as a government shutdown is,

the economic shutdown caused by America defaulting

would be dramatically worse.

And I want to talk about this for a minute,

because even though people can see and feel the effects

of a government shutdown --

they're already experiencing it right now --

there are still some people out there

who don't believe that default is a real thing.

And we've been hearing that from some Republicans in Congress

that default would not be a big deal.

So let me explain this.

If Congress refuses to raise what's called the debt ceiling,

America would not be able

to meet all of our financial obligations

for the first time in 225 years.

And because it's called "raising the debt ceiling,"

I think a lot of Americans think it's raising our debt.

It is not raising our debt.

This does not add a dime to our debt.

It simply says, you pay for what Congress

has already authorized America to purchase.

Whether that's the greatest military in the world,

or veterans benefits, or Social Security --

whatever it is that Congress has already authorized,

what this does is make sure that we can pay those bills.

Now, the last time that the tea party Republicans flirted

with the idea of default two years ago, markets plunged,

business and consumer confidence plunged,

America's credit rating was downgraded for the first time.

And a decision to actually go through with it,

to actually permit default, according to many CEOs

and economists, would be -- and I'm quoting here --

"insane," "catastrophic," "chaos."

These are some of the more polite words.

Warren Buffett likened default to a nuclear bomb,

a weapon too horrible to use.

It would disrupt markets.

It would undermine the world's confidence in America

as the bedrock of the global economy.

And it might permanently increase our borrowing costs --

which, of course, ironically would mean

that it would be more expensive for us

to service what debt we do have,

and it would add to our deficits and our debt, not decrease them.

There's nothing fiscally responsible about that.

Preventing this should be simple.

As I said, "raising the debt ceiling" is a lousy name,

which is why members of Congress in both parties

don't like to vote on it,

because it makes you vulnerable in political campaigns.

But it does not increase our debt.

It does not grow our deficits.

It does not allow for a single dime of increased spending.

All it does is allow the Treasury Department

to pay for what Congress has already spent.

But, as I said, it's always a tough vote.

People don't like doing it -- although it has been done

45 times since Ronald Reagan took office.

Nobody in the past has ever seriously threatened

to breach the debt ceiling until the last two years.

And this is the creditworthiness of the United States

that we're talking about.

This is our word.

This is our good name.

This is real.

In a government shutdown, millions of Americans

face inconvenience or outright hardship.

In an economic shutdown, every American could see their 401ks

and home values fall;

borrowing costs for mortgages and student loans rise.

And there would be a significant risk of a very deep recession

at a time when we're still climbing our way out

of the worst recession in our lifetimes.

The American people have already fought too hard and too long

to come back from one crisis only to see

a handful of more extreme Republicans

in the House of Representatives precipitate another one.

Now, the good news is, over the past three and a half years,

our businesses have created 7.5 million new jobs.

Our housing market is healing.

We've cut the deficit in half since I took office.

The deficit is coming down faster than any time

in the last 50 years.

America is poised to become the number-one energy producer

in the world this year.

This year, for the first time in a very long time,

we're producing more oil than we're importing.

So we've got a lot of good things going for us.

But the uncertainty caused by just one week of this nonsense

so far has caused businesses to reconsider spending and hiring.

You've seen consumer confidence plunge

to the lowest level since 2008.

You've seen mortgages held up by thousands of homebuyers

who weren't sure about the economic situation out there.

And all this adds to our deficits;

it doesn't subtract from it.

So we can't afford these manufactured crises

every few months.

And as I said, this one isn't even about deficits

or spending or budgets.

Our deficits are falling at the fastest pace in 60 years.

The budget that the Senate passed

is at Republican spending levels.

It's their budget that Democrats were willing to put votes on

just to make sure the government was open

while negotiations took place for a longer-term budget.

And what's happened -- the way we got to this point

was one thing and one thing only,

and that was Republican obsession

with dismantling the Affordable Care Act

and denying health care to millions of Americans.

That law, ironically, is moving forward.

So most Americans -- Democrats and Republicans --

agree that health care should not have anything to do

with keeping our government open or paying our bills on time --

which is why I will sit down and work with anyone

of any party not only to talk about the budget,

I'll talk about ways to improve the health care system.

I'll talk about ways that we can shrink our long-term deficits.

I'll also want to talk about how

we're going to help the middle class

and strengthen early childhood education,

and improve our infrastructure, and research and development.

There are a whole bunch of things I want to talk about

in terms of how we're going to make sure that everybody

is getting a fair shake in this society,

and that our economy is growing in a broad-based way

and building our middle class.