White House Says It Will Not ‘Negotiat[e] With People With A Bomb Strapped To Their Chest’

‘What they’re doing is unprecedented’

White House Says It Will Not 'Negotiat[e] With People With A Bomb Strapped To Their Chest' (CNN)

TAPPER: You saw -- and this is the final question. You saw today a new Bloomberg News poll indicating that the American people support by a 2-1 margin its right to require spending cuts when negotiating the debt ceiling.

I understand that Keystone and other provisions that the Republicans are talking about attaching to the debt ceiling are not related, but why not cut some spending?

PFEIFFER: The Republicans -- we are for cutting spending. We're for reforming our tax code. We're for reforming our entitlements.

What we're not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest. We're not going to do that. So, if they want to have a discussion about how we reduce our deficits, how we help the middle class, how we give them a better bargain, lift the debt ceiling, take the full faith and credit of the United States off the table and let's have a discussion.

I don't think -- that's not a particularly complicated thing. What they're doing is unprecedented. Imagine a scenario years from now, different Congress -- we agree to their demands now. A year from now, maybe they want to privatize Medicare. Maybe four years from now, there's a Democratic Congress and a Republican president, and the Democrats come forward and say, if you don't raise taxes to levels that you don't want, then we're going to cause the economy to blow up.

We cannot live in a world where one-half of one branch of government can extract their demands that have been rejected by voters and can't pass under normal circumstances or they are going to blow up the economy.

TAPPER: But Senator Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling.

PFEIFFER: He did. And he has discussed that. But what he did not do is say, give me X, give me 100 percent of what I want, or we are going to default. That changed in 2011 with the House Republicans.

TAPPER: Do you acknowledge that President Obama bears any of the responsibility for this crisis in Washington right now or do you really view it that the House Republicans are entirely responsible?

PFEIFFER: I believe the House Republicans are entirely responsible.

TAPPER: One hundred percent?

PFEIFFER: Yes, absolutely.

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