Obama Pins Government Shutdown On Boehner [VIDEO]

President Barack Obama says House Speaker John Boehner is the only thing standing in the way of reopening the federal government.

Speaking at a construction company in Washington's Maryland suburbs, Obama cast the House speaker as a captive of a small band of conservative Republicans who want to extract concessions in exchange for passing a short term spending bill that would restart the partially shuttered government.

"The only thing preventing people from going back to work and basic research starting back up and farmers and small business owners getting their loans, the only thing that is preventing all that from happening right now, today, in the next five minutes is that Speaker John Boehner won't even let the bill get a yes or no vote because he doesn't want to anger the extremists in his party," Obama said.

The president is calling on Boehner to quickly hold a vote on a bill free of extra demands.  The president met with Boehner and other congressional leaders at the White House for more than an hour Wednesday, but no agreement was reached.

Obama says the longer the shutdown goes on, the worse the impact on the U.S. economy will be.

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