From David Simas, White House Deputy Senior Advisor
Late Wednesday night, after a 16-day shutdown, the President signed a bill to reopen the government and pay our country’s bills. Today, a government shutdown over delaying or defunding the health care law can no longer hurt our economy. We are no longer facing the threat of default.
While this bipartisan compromise is the right thing to do for the country, there are no winners when Washington keeps hijacking our economy month after month.
Nobody wins when hundreds of thousands of people don’t know when their next paycheck will come. Nobody wins when millions of veterans and seniors risk losing benefits that they’ve paid for, earned, and rely on. Nobody wins when businesses stop hiring and our economy grows slower than it could.
Ultimately, the reason this shutdown ended was simple: Democrats and responsible Republicans got together, recognized that holding the American economy hostage should have no place in our politics, and got the job done. They did what the American people elected them to do.
Today, every American should have a clear sense of where we stand, and where we’re going. Watch the President’s statement yesterday about the end of the shutdown, and then pass it along so that other folks see it, too.
In his remarks, the President asked Congress to focus on finishing three specific policy priorities in the weeks to come.
First, that means passing a budget that invests in the things that will create a better bargain for the middle class — like educating our children, and improving our infrastructure — while continuing to cut our deficit in a balanced way.
Second, it means fixing our broken immigration system so everyone plays by the same rules. The Senate has already passed a bill that would continue to strengthen our borders and grow our economy by bringing millions of undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and give them the chance to earn their citizenship by paying a fine and taxes, passing a background check, and going to the back of the line.
And third, it means passing a farm bill that ranching and farming families can rely on: one that protects working families and gives rural communities opportunities to grow.
We’ll be back in touch soon with more specific ways that every one of us can support this work. But for now, we should all have the facts on exactly what ending this shutdown means for all of us — today, and in the weeks to come.
