Government shutdown impasse continues after White House meet as upcoming debt battle looms large

WASHINGTON — They came together, but they’re still miles apart.

President Obama and leaders of Congress met face-to-face Wednesday for the first time since the government shutdown began — but they made no progress toward ending the deadlock that has forced 800,000 federal workers off the job and disrupted services from coast to coast.

The Republicans insisted that changes to Obamacare be part of any deal to fund the government. The President and the Democrats refused.

“We had a nice, polite conversation,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said after the White House sitdown. But he said that Democrats “will not negotiate” and that “we’ve got divided government.”

“All we’re asking for here is a discussion and fairness for the American people under Obamacare,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (R-Calif.) then emerged on the White House driveway to chide Boehner. Reid called him intransigent, while Pelosi said, “I can only conclude they want to shut down government.”

Reid said, “One thing we made very clear in that meeting: We are locked in tight on Obamacare.”

Day Two of the shutdown played out with national parks and museums closed, Head Start centers shuttered, a federal cancer program refusing new patients and Wall Street leaders calling for compromise.

Among the few to feel any vague relief were members of The Greatest Generation, aging veterans who were granted access to the shutdown World War II Memorial in Washington — but only after they walked a gauntlet of glad-handing, publicity-seeking members of Congress.

The White House meeting lasted 90 minutes. Obama, Vice President Biden and the leaders of both parties from both houses attended, without their staffs, in the Oval Office.

Obama did not appear before the cameras and microphones, but in an earlier interview with CNBC, he derided Boehner for “not being willing to say no to a faction of the Republican Party that is willing to burn the house down due to an obsession with my health care initiative.”

He said Republicans, who control the House, must agree to reopen government without conditions and agree, without conditions, to raise the nation’s borrowing limit — an even more contentious issue that must be resolved by Oct. 17.

“If we get in the habit where a few folks, an extremist wing of one party, whether it’s Democrat or Republican, are allowed to extort concessions based on a threat to undermine the full faith and credit of the United States, then any President who comes after me, not just me, will find themselves unable to govern effectively,” Obama said.

Joining the White House fray earlier was another potent group: leaders of Wall Street’s biggest institutions.

They visited Obama and congressional Republicans to warn that the borrowing limit must be raised to prevent an unprecedented default on the federal debt, which could put the world’s economy in peril.

That issue took on greater relevance Wednesday, because it appeared increasingly likely that the shutdown could linger and be rolled into a complex, combined negotiation that would include the debt limit.

Yet, after his meeting at the White House, a dour Reid suggested a default was a distinct possibility.

Not too far away, another chapter in one of the early mini-dramas of the shutdown played out, involving the World War II vets.

The memorial on the National Mall was closed when the shutdown began Tuesday — but nearly 100 veterans from Mississippi, brought to Washington by the charitable Honor Flight Network, swept past the barricades, anyway.

Three more groups of World War II veterans from Missouri and Illinois arrived Wednesday amid a warning about possible trespassing charges. But there was not a uniformed Park Police officer in sight.

Instead, they were actually escorted to the memorial by members of their states’ congressional delegations, and others were waiting beneath the Pacific Theater arch, including Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.), himself a Vietnam veteran whose votes helped to shut the government down.

“I’m just here to make sure the gates open,” Bentivolio said.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who accompanied vets to the monument, said there were “no politics” involved in her visit, but questioned the presence of several hard-line members of the Tea Party caucus like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Steve King (R-Iowa), who did not have constituents on hand.

Asked about the absence of cops, McCaskill said, “People in the Park Service have more common sense than the Tea Party.”

Later in the day, the House GOP majority teed up bills funding popular parts of the huge federal bureaucracy. Those included national parks, the processing of veterans’ claims, the Washington, D.C., government, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Guard.

But Reid repeated that he wouldn’t consider the measures until the House passes a bill funding all of government — even though the Senate already okayed a measure providing members of the military pay during the shutdown.

“We have to stop playing these foolish games that keep coming to us from the other side of the Capitol,” Reid said.

The GOP bills aim to saddle Democrats with some public blame for shuttered federal services.

Republicans jumped on remarks that Reid made when he was questioned by CNN on why he would not permit action on a Republican bill to allow the National Institutes of Health to accept new pediatric cancer patients.

Asked why he wouldn’t pass the bill if it would help one child with cancer, Reid responded: “What right do they have to pick and choose which part of government is going to be funded? It’s obvious what’s going on here. You talk about reckless and irresponsible, wow.”

Reid was then pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash if he would allow the legislation to go forward if it meant helping even one child.

“Why pit one against the other?” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) interjected.

Reid then added, “Why would we want to do that? I have 1,100 people at Nellis Air Force base that are sitting at home. They have a few problems of their own. To have someone of your intelligence to suggest such a thing means you’re as irresponsible and reckless,” he lectured Bash.

Republicans jumped on Reid’s initial response — “Why would we want to do that?” — as being insensitive toward children with cancer.

Democrats insisted Reid’s comment was a rejection of the idea of pitting government programs against each other, and not a rejection of helping children with cancer.

On a mobile device? Click here to watch the video.