Kerry Urges Congress to End Shutdown, Republicans Rip White House

Local Editor

US Secretary of State John Kerry urged the Congress to think long and hard about the message US sends the world when "we can't get our own act together."
Kerry, in Bali for an economic summit, called Saturday for Congress to reach an agreement to end the partial shutdown of the federal government, now entering its fifth day.
This comes as President Barack Obama had planned to attend the summit but canceled his travel plans to remain in Washington and deal with the shutdown. Kerry is now leading the US delegation in the talks.
Kerry added that America's "friends and foes" shouldn't mistake the government shutdown as anything other than a "moment of politics."
Meanwhile, Republicans launched a furious counter-attack on the White House as the US government shutdown dragged deep into a fourth day, but no fresh path to ending the crisis was offered.
With lawmakers heading into the weekend, Congress appeared no closer to resolving the impasse, even as a far more challenging fiscal hurdle - the need to raise the US debt ceiling or suffer a catastrophic credit default - was barely 12 days away.

"This isn't some damn game," boomed House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, seeking to seize the moral high ground, after a report cited an unnamed official saying that the White House is benefiting from the shutdown, which has sent hundreds of thousands home without pay.
"This morning, I get the Wall Street Journal out and it says, 'well, we don't care how long this lasts, because we're winning,'" Boehner said, theatrically waving a copy of the paper.

"The American people don't want their government shut down and neither do I," he added.

"All we're asking for is to sit down and have a discussion, reopen the government and bring fairness to the American people under 'Obamacare,'" the health care law that is President Barack Obama's signature domestic achievement.
The White House on Friday tried to contain the damage from the Journal quote, which dominated the media messaging war raging between Obama and his Republican foes on Capitol Hill.

Obama even staged a photo op - a rare stroll outside the White House to a nearby sandwich shop - to try and arrest the fallout.
"There's no winning when families don't have any certainty over whether they are going to get paid or not," he said of the first shutdown in 17 years.
"This shutdown could be over today," Obama added, calling on Boehner to call a vote on a temporary funding measure to reopen government.
Both the House of Representatives and the Senate will convene rare Saturday sessions.

Obama is refusing to negotiate with Republicans over budget issues until they pass a temporary bill to open the government and agree to raise the $16.7 trillion US statutory borrowing limit - without which Washington could default on its debts for the first time ever later this month.

But Republicans are demanding the president enter into talks on their goal to defund or delay his health reform law - a step Obama refuses to take.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team