affected if we are not able to pay all our bills on time. what's also true is if the markets are seeing that we're not paying all our bills on time that will affect our creditworthiness even if some people are being paid on time. so again, just to boil this down to personal examples, if you've got a mortgage, a car note, and a student loan you have to pay and you say, well, i'll make sure i pay my mortgage but i'm not going to pay my student loan or my car note, that's still going to have an impact on your credit. everybody's still going to look at that and say you know what? i'm not sure this person's that trustworthy. and at minimum presumably they're going to try to have a higher interest rate. that's what would happen to you if you made those decisions. the same is true for the federal government. we are exploring all contingencies. i know secretary lew, the secretary of the treasury, will

be appearing before the congress on thursday, and he can address some of the additional details about this. but let me be clear. no option is good in that scenar scenario. there's no silver bullet. there's no magic wand that allows us to wish away the chaos that could result if for the first time in our history we don't pay our bills on time. and when i hear people trying to downplay the consequences of that i think that's really irresponsible. and i'm happy to talk to any of them individually and walk them through exactly why it's irresponsible. and it's particularly funny coming from republicans who claim to be champions of business. there's no businessperson out here who doesn't think this would be a big deal. not one. you go anywhere from wall street to main street and ask the ceo of a company, ask a small

businessperson whether it would be a big deal if the united states government isn't paying its bills on time. they'd tell you it's a big deal, it would hurt. and it's unnecessary. that's the worst part of it. that this is not a complicated piece of business. and there's no reason why if in fact republicans are serious about wanting to negotiate, wanting to have a conversation, wanting to talk, there's no reason why you have to have that threat looming over the conversations. i mean, think about it. the only reason that the republicans have held out on negotiations up until the last week or so is because they thought it was a big enough deal that they would force unilateral concessions out of democrats and out of me. they said so. they basically said, you know, the president's so responsible that if we just hold our breath

and say we're going to threaten default then he'll give us what we want and we won't have to give anything in return. again, that's not my account of the situation. you can read statements from republicans over the last several months who said this explicitly. and for them now to say well, it wouldn't be a big deal if it happens, that's not how they've been acting over the last couple months. and if it's not a big deal, then why would i give them concessions now to avoid it? it is a big deal. and nobody should be making concessions for making sure that the full faith and credit of the united states is retained. sam stein. >> thank you, mr. president. what assurance can you give to those affected by a shutdown who are concerned about an even longer impasse? and how worried are you personally that your preferred solution to this is a clean cr

at sequestration levels may do harm to the nation's economy and your second-term agenda? >> well, sam, you're making an important point, which is what we're asking of the republicans right now so to keep the government open at funding levels that democrats think are very harmful to the economy and inadequate to make sure that the economy's growing faster, more people are put back to work, and the middle class is growing. we're willing to pass at least a short-term budget that opens up the government at current funding lflz. it doesn't even address the harm that's been done because of sequestration. now, the democrats have a budget that would eliminate sequestration, this meat cleaver approach to deficit reduction,

and make sure that we're adequately funding basic medical research and head start programs and v.a. programs and a whole range of things that have been really hard hit this year. but we recognize there are going to have to be some compromises between the democratic position and the republican position. and in the meantime we'll hurt the economy even worse by shutting down the government. so let me just give you an example. very specific. because of sequestration, because of the meat cleaver cuts that have been taking place over the course of this year, thousands of families have lost head start slots for their children. you've had projects all across the country who have been scrambling trying to figure out how can i find some decent-quality childcare for my kids. now, the government shutdown

means several thousand more are going to be losing their slots. if we vote today or tomorrow or the xt day in the house of representatives to go ahead and reopen the government, at least those additional several thousand people will be spared the difficulties of trying to scramble and figure out where your kids are going to be when you're trying to go to work. but it doesn't solve the broader problems. and if we were going to have real negotiations, democrats would say let's solve the bigger problem, what about all those thousands that have been hurt by sequester? the democrats aren't making that demand right now. we understand there's going to have to be some give and take. but what we are saying is don't hurt more people while we're trying to resolve these differences. let's just at least make sure that we keep the lights on while we're having these conversations. >> [ inaudible ]. >> excuse me? >> do you -- [ inaudible ] >> absolutely.

that's how we'veless done. roberta ranton. >> you talked a bit about the hit to credibility around the world that this impasse has caused. i'm wondering what you and your administration are telling worried foreign creditors in china and japan who are calling and asking about whether the united states is going to avoid defaulting on its debt. >> well, i won't disclose any specific conversations. but obviously, my messageo the world is the united states always has paid its bills and it will do so again. but i think they're not just looking at what i say. they're looking at what congress does. and that ultimately is up to speaker boehner. this will not get resolved. we're not going to calm creditored until they see speaker boehner call up a bill that reopens the government and authorizes the secretary of the treasury to pay our bills on time. and until they see that, there's

going to be a cloud over u.s. economic credibility. but it is not one from which we can't recover. we've been through this before. you know, every country, every democracy in particular has tussles over the budget, and i think most world leaders understand it. they themselves have been through it if they're in a democracy. what you haven't seen before, i think from the vantage point of a lot of world leaders, is the notion that one party in congress might blow the whole thing up if they don't get their way. they've never seen that before. and that does make them nervous, particularly given what happened in 2011. keep in mind we've been here before. we saw what happened in 2011. i think the assumption was that the americans must have learned their lesson.

that there would be budget conflicts but no one again would threaten the possibility that we would default. and when they hear members of the senate and members of congress saying maybe default wouldn't be that bad, i'll bet that makes them nervous. it makes me nervous. it should make the american people nervous. because that's irresponsible. it is out of touch with reality. it is based on a flawed analysis of how our economy works. you cannot pay some bills and not others and think somehow that the fact that you're paying some bills protects you from a loss of creditworthiness. that's not what happens in our own personal lives. i don't know why people think that that's how it works for the united states government. >> do you think you might have emergency powers that you could use after any default situation? >> we have used a lot of our emergency powers. jack lew has used extraordinary

measures to keep paying our bills over the last several months. but at a certain point those emergency powers run out. and the clock is ticking. and i do worry that republicans but also some democrats may think that we've got a bunch of other rabbits in our hat. there comes a point in which if the treasury cannot hold auctions to sell treasury bills we do not have enough money coming in to pay all our bills on time. it's very straightforward. and i know there's been some discussion, for example, about my powers under the 14th amendment to go ahead and ignore the debt ceiling law. setting aside the legal analysis, what matters is tha if you start having a situation in which there's legal controversy about the u.s.

treasury's authority to issue debt, the damage will have been done even if that were constitutional. because people wouldn't be sure. they'd be tied up in litigation for a long time. that's going to make people nervous. so a lot of the strategies people have talked about, well, the president can roll out a big coin and -- or he can resort to some other constitutional measure, what people ignore is that ultimately what matters is what do the people who are buying treasury bills think? and again, i'll just boil it down in very personal terms. if you're buying a house and you're not sure whether the seller has title to the house, you're going to be pretty nervous about buying it. and at minimum you'd want a much

cheaper price to buy that house because you wouldn't be sure whether or not you're going to own it at the end. most of us would just walk away because no matter how much we like the house we'd say to ourselves the last thing i want is to find out after i bought it that i don't actually own it. well, the same thing is true if i'm buying treasury bills from the u.s. government and here i am sitting here, what if there's a supreme court case deciding that these aren't valid? that these aren't valid legal instruments obligating the u.s. government to pay me. i'm going to be stressed. which means i may not purchase them. and if i do purchase them, i'm going to ask for a big premium. so there are no magic bullets here. there's one simple way of doing it, and that is congress going in and voting. and the fact that right now there are votes, i believe, to go ahead and take this drama off

the table should at least be tested. speaker boehner keeps on saying he doesn't have the votes for it. and what i've said is put it on the floor. see what happens. and at minimum let every member of congress be on record. let them vote to keep the government open or not. and they can determine where they stand and defend that vote to their constituencies and let them vote on whether america should pay its bills or not. and if in fact some of these folks really believe that it's not that big of a deal, they can vote no. and that will be useful information for voters to have. and if it fails and we do end up defaulting, i think voters should know exactly who voted not to pay our bills. so that they can be responsible for the consequences that come

with it. barry shapiro. >> you mentioned the supreme court term started today with the campaign finance case that picks up where citizens united left off. you've called citizens united devastating to the public interest. so i wonder if you could weigh in op this latest case. >> well, the latest case would go even further than citizens united. i mean, essentially it would say anything goes. there are no rules in terms of how to finance campaigns. there aren't a lot of functioning democracies around the world that work this way, where you can basically have millionaires and billionaires bankrolling whoever they want however they want, in some cases undisclosed, and what it means is ordinary americans are shut out of the process. and democrats aren't entirely innocent of this in the past. and i had to raise a lot of money for my campaign.

there's nobody in operates in politics that has perfectly clean hands on this issue. but what is also true is that all of us should bind ourselves to some rules that say the people who vote for us should be more important than somebody who's spending a million dollars, $10 million, or $100 million to help us get elected because we don't know what their agendas are. we don't know what their interests are. and i continue to believe that citizens united contributed to some of the problems we're having in washington right now. you have some ideological extremists who have a big bankroll, and they can entirely skew our politics. and there are a whole bunch of members of congress right now who privately will tell you i know our positions are unreasonable but we're scared that if we don't go along with the tea party agenda or some

particularly extremist agenda that we'll be challenged from the right. and the threats are very explicit. and so they toe the line. that's part of why we've seen a breakdown of just normal routine business done here in washington on behalf of the american people. and all of you know it. i'm not telling you anything you don't know. because it's very explicit. you report on it. a big chunk of the republican party right now are in gerrymandered districts where there's no competition, and those folks are much more worried about a tea party challenger than they are about a general election where they've got to compete against a democrat or go after independent votes. and in that environment it's a lot harder for them to compromise. mark langley.

>> thank you, mr. president. this week the president of china has visited several of the asian countries that you were going to visit and now had to skip because of the shutdown. >> right. >> he's also taken a big role at the two regional summits, both of which your administration has made a pretty big priority as part of the broader asian pivot. does china benefit from the chaos in washington? and then more broadly, you've said in general that this hurts the reputation of the united states overseas. are there specific things that you can point to where you already have seen some damage? and one that occurs to me is the trade deal tha you've tried to do in asia. the leaders today announced that they still want to wrap it up, but they no longer are able to say they want to wrap it up by the end of this year. had you been there, do you think you could have gotten that additional push? >> i think that's a great example, and we don't know, but it didn't help that i wasn't

there. to make sure that we went ahead and closed a trade deal that would open up markets and create jobs for the united states and make sure that countries were trading fairly with us in the most dynamic, fastest-growing market in the world. i should have been there. but i can tell you because i had to apologize to some of the host countries that they understood that the most important thing i can do for them and the most important thing i can do for the bilateral relationship and america's reputation is making sure we reopen our government and we don't default. so i don't think it's going to do lasting damage. as i said, if we deal with this the way we should, then you know, folks around the world will attribute this to the messy

usual process of american democracy but it doesn't do lasting damage. in the short term i would characterize it as missed opportunities. we continue to be the one indispensable nation. there are countries across asia who have welcomed our pivot because they want to do business with us. they admire our economy. they admire our entrepreneurs. they know their growth is going to be contingent on working with us. they care about the security environment we maintain, help maintain, and the freedom of navigation and commerce that's so important to them. so it's not as if they've got other places to go. they want us to be there and they want to work with us. but you know, in each of these big meetings that we have around

the world a lot of business gets done. in the same way that a ceo of a company, if they want to close a deal, they're hardly going to do it by phone. they want to show up and look at somebody eye to eye and tell them why it's important and shake hands on a deal. but the same thing is true with respect to world leaders. and the irony is our teams probably do more to organize a lot of these multilateral forums and set the agenda than anybody. we end being engaged much more than china, for example, in setting the agenda and moving this stuff forward. it's almost like me not throwing up, not showing up to my own party. i think it creates a sense of concern on the part of other leaders. but as long as we get through this they'll understand it and

we'll be able to i believe still get these deals done. the last point i'd make, though, is we can't do it every three months. right? back in the '90s we had a government shutdown. that happened one time. then after that the republican party and mr. gingrich realized this isn't a sensible way to do business, that we shouldn't engage in brinkszmanship like this. and then they started having a serious conversation with president clinton about a whole range of issues and they got some things that they wanted. they had to give the democrats some things that the democrats wanted. but it took on, you know, a sense of normal democratic process. so here we already went through this once back in 2011. and then last year right after my election we went through something similar with the

so-called fiscal cliff where republicans wouldn't negotiate about taxes, despite the fact that taxes actually went up anyway. even though they refused to negotiate. they could actually have gotten some things from us that they wanted if they had been willing to engage in normal negotiations. so we've got to keep -- we've got to stop repeating this pattern. i know the american people are tired of it. and to all the american people i apologize that you have to go through this stuff every three months, it seems like. and lord knows i'm tired of it. but at some point we've got to kind of break these habits and get back to the point where everybody understands that in negotiations there is give and there is take and you do not hold people hostage or engage in ransom taking to get 100% of

your way. and you don't -- you don't suggest that somehow a health care bill that you don't agree with is destroying the republic or is a grand socialist scheme. you know, if you disagree with certain aspects of it, tell us why you disagree with it, and let's work on it. if you're concerned about long-term debt, that's a good thin thing to be concerned about. but don't pretend as if america's going bankrupt at a time when the deficits have been cut in half. that's what the american people i think expect, is just civility, common sense, give and take, compromise toes aren't dirt y dirty words. there's nothing wrong with them. and i think the american people understand, i may not -- i may. i have flaws. michelle will tell you.

one of them is not that i'm unwilling to compromise. i've been willing to compromise my entire political career. and i don't believe that i have the answers to everything and it's my way or the highway. but i'm not going to breach a basic principle that would weaken the presidency, change our democracy, and do great damage to ordinary people just in order to go along with what the house republicans are talking about. >> i did ask specifically about china. and i'm wondering whether -- to what extent is our loss their gain? >> you know, i'm sure the chinese don't mind that i'm not there right now. in the sense that, you know, there are areas where we have differences and they can present their point of view and not get

as much of pushback as if i were there, although secretary of state kerry is there and i'm sure he's doing a great job. but i've also said that our cooperation with china is not a zero sum game. there are a lot of areas where the chinese and us agree. on trade in particular, though, here's an area where part of what we're trying to do is raise standards for, for example, intellectual property protection. which sometimes is a big problem in china. and if we can get a trade deal with all the other countries in asia that says you've got to protect people's intellectual property, that'll help us in our negotiations with china. richard mcgregor.