Thaindian News

Washington, Dec 16 (IANS) With a political gridlock again threatening a government shutdown, US President Barack Obama has accused opposition Republicans of grinding things to a halt over personal animosity toward him — as well as an inability to compromise.

“You know, you never want to say, ‘It’s all them’,” he said in a Yahoo!/ABC News interview Thursday, faulting the Republicans for congressional and legislative gridlock.

“But I do think that right now at least, in the Republican Party there are a couple of notions. Number one is that compromise is a dirty word. Number two, anything that Obama’s for, we’re against.”

“I do think those dynamics are making it more difficult to get things done,” Obama said. “And it’s not unusual, after such a severe economic crisis like this, for the politics to be impacted by that, for people to lurch into extremes, or to get more combative.”

He said that there is no reason “the government should shut down over this”.

Obama’s comments amid Democrats and Republicans failure to compromise, fuelled in part by pre-primary rhetoric on the campaign trail threatened for the third time this year to shut down the government this weekend if both sides can’t reach a deal on a spending bill and payroll tax cut extension.

The president also pointed to the ongoing fight over Democrats’ health care overhaul as an example of what has gone awry, calling out his top two potential Republican challengers, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, for having previously supported elements in his plan.

“If I propose a health care bill that is full of Republican ideas — in fact, is very similar to the law that was passed by the current Republican front-runner, or one of the top front runners and the other guy was supportive of many of the ideas as well — suddenly, they become against it,” he said.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)