President Barack Obama is touting positive gains in the economy but also warning that a "locked up" Washington is delaying progress on other issues that could build on that growth.
OBAMA: The problem is right now that this town, Washington, is locked up. And we are not seeing the kind of progress that we should on these issues.
So immigration is the most obvious example. We have bipartisan agreement; we got a bill passed out of the Senate. It’s sitting there in the House, and if Speaker Boehner called that bill today, it would pass.
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OBAMA: What we now have is a ideological fight that's been mounted in the House of Representatives that says, we're not going to pass a budget and we will threaten a government shutdown unless we repeal the Affordable Care Act.
We have not seen this in the past that a budget is contingent on us eliminating a program that was voted on, passed by both chambers of Congress, ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court, is two weeks from being fully implemented, and that helps 30 million people finally get health care coverage.
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OBAMA: You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt ceiling being used to extort a President or a governing party, and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and have nothing to do with the debt.
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