President Obama is deliberately inflicting pain upon the American people during the partial government shutdown and the matter may end up in the legal system, according to Iowa Rep. Steve King.
He also says Republicans are offering to fund the government over and over with no support from Democrats and claims that Obama would get his way if the House would vote simply isn’t true.
King is one of the most visible GOP members to help World War II veterans gain access to their memorial on the National Mall in Washington. Just this week, he again demanded the National Park Service remove the barricades, not just for veterans but the public at large. The effort was successful until heavy rains forced everyone away. But King says Obama’s actions during the shutdown are deplorable.
“I think it’s the most spiteful act by a commander-in-chief in the history of this country,” said King. “So what has happened is the president, I believe, ordered this out of the oval office because he wouldn’t take this kind of embarrassment if some subordinate did it. So here’s what happened. They borrow money from the Chinese to rent barricades brought in on forklifts and he called rangers off of furlough to put up barricades and to be there to guard the memorials.”
“This government shutdown is defined by Congress and not the president. It says essential services shall stay open. Non-essential services shall not. There’s never been a service there at the memorial for the purposes of blocking people out. The president has created a new function for the park service and that’s to keep Americans out of the memorials. That’s not what you do with essential services and he has no lawful authority to do that. That’s why we’re opening it up and this time he can take us to court,” said King.
As for the shutdown standoff, King says it’s hard to find common ground when the Democratic offer is to hold negotiations after Republicans relent on funding the government and raising the debt ceiling.
“It’s so hard to take that seriously when they say, ‘Well, give us what we demand and then we’ll negotiate with you afterwards.’ Why would anybody take people seriously who take that position?” asked King. “He’s almost in a ludicrous position to be asserting that he refuses to negotiate with the House and he refuses to negotiate on the continuing resolution and he refuses to negotiate on the debt ceiling.”
“He’ll negotiate with Syria and Dictator Assad through Putin and using him as his intermediary. At the same time he’ll open up negotiations with Iran, who we haven’t had diplomatic relations with since 1979. But there are no diplomatic relations between the White House and the Congress,” he said.
King wasn’t specific about what Republicans would find acceptable in bipartisan negotiations, but he did speculate on how the impasse might end.
“I think you have to let the pressure build a little bit and pass these individual pieces of legislation to fund the components of government individually and force them to vote on it, if they have to do that long enough they’re going to start to feel the pressure and decide to get an agreement,” said King.
King is also firing back at falsehoods that he says are passing for truth in most of the media. He says not only are there not enough votes in the House to pass the Democratic continuing resolution but previous votes show exactly what the House wants.
“They’re trying to run the government by polling or by opinion. We actually have votes on the floor of the House of Representatives and the votes have said no funding for Obamacare over and over again,” said King. “To repeal Obamacare fully, to cut off all funding for Obamacare fully, that’s the votes that win the majority in the House of Representatives.”
The congressman says House Republicans have voted to fund the government in every recent vote, with the exception of Obamacare and sometimes just a portion of Obamacare. He says the notion that Republicans shut down the government is dead wrong.
“It’s an unbelievable, bald-face lie. There is no vote they can point their finger to that could be such a thing. We have always voted to fund it all except Obamacare. But they make it up as they go along and the Sunday shows let them get away with it. I was on one. There’s so much misinformation out there, there was not time for me to correct it all,” said King.