Boehner to Obama: ‘Pick Up the Phone, I’m Ready To Talk’ [VIDEO]

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House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blames President Barack Obama for the continued government shutdown as well as the looming default because he simply won’t negotiate, reports The Hill.com.

In fact, Boehner, who, along with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Ky) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), has made it his business to link defunding Obamacare, President Obama’s signature healthcare law, with funding the government and raising the debt ceiling, says that all President Obama has to do is “pick up the phone.”

“The president’s refusal to talk is resulting in a possible default on our debt,” Boehner said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“All he has to do is pick up the phone. I’m ready to talk, I’ve been ready to talk.”

Read more from The Hill:

Boehner said he hoped that the president canceling his trip to Asia this weekend would mean that he is ready to negotiate.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) responded that his party is more than happy to talk but not at the peril of future negotiations.

“This is playing with fire and we’re happy to negotiate, but we want to negotiate without a gun to our head,” he said on ABC.

He said he believes that the Speaker will blink.

“If you go for this kind of hostage-taking once, as the president did in 2011 it doesn’t go away it comes back worse and worse and worse.”

Schumer said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and hard-right Republicans are “holding him hostage.”

“Up until now he hasn’t had the courage or strength to resist them but so he’ll be forced to raise the debt ceiling.”

Boehner also said the House does not have the votes to pass either a “clean” stopgap spending measure or raise the debt limit, which the White House is demanding.

“I told the president that there’s no way we’re going to pass it when the votes are not in the House to pass a clean debt limit,” he said.

“We are not going down that path of passing a clean debt limit, it’s time to deal with America’s problems,” he said.

“How can you raise the debt limit and do nothing about the underlying problem?”

Read more at The Hill.com.

See Boehner in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos below:

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