Think about it this way, the American people do not get to demand a ransom for doing their jobs. You don't get a chance to call your bank and say I'm not going to pay my mortgage this month unless you throw in a new car and an Xbox. If you're in negotiations around buying somebody's house, you don't get to say, well, let's talk about the price I'm going to pay, and if you don't give the price then I'm going to burn down your house. That's not how negotiations work. That's not how it happens in business. That's not how it happens in private life.

In the same way, members of Congress, and the House Republicans in particular, don't get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their jobs. And two of their very basic jobs are passing a budget and making sure that America's paying its bills. They don't also get to say, you know, unless you give me what the voters rejected in the last election, I'm going to cause a recession.

That's not how it works. No American president would deal with a foreign leader like this. Most of you would not deal with either co- workers or business associates in this fashion. And we shouldn't be dealing this way here in Washington.

What we haven't been able to get are serious positions from the Republicans that would allow us to actually resolve some core differences. And they have decided to run out the clock until there's a government shutdown or the possibility of default, thinking that it would give them more leverage. That's not my characterization. They've said it themselves. That was their strategy from the start. And that is not how our government is supposed to run.

and I'm quoting here -- "insane, catastrophic, chaos" -- these are some of the more polite words.

Warren Buffett likened default to a nuclear bomb, a weapon too horrible to use. It would disrupt markets, it would undermine the world's confidence in America as the bedrock of the global economy, and it might permanently increase our borrowing costs which, of course, ironically would mean that it would be more expensive for us to service what debt we do have and it would add to our deficits and our debt, not decrease them.

Americans will only be able to return to work, Obama said, "when Republicans realize they don't get to hold the entire economy hostage over ideological demands."

This is an exceedingly dangerous view that ignores the reality that every parent learns the hard way: Unchecked bad behavior begets worse behavior.

Just take a look at what’s happened to the Senate in recent years. Once, filibusters were rare exceptions. Now, they are constant. Nearly every bill, no matter how trivial, requires 60 votes for passage in a body that historically required a mere majority.

Similarly, presidential nominations are now routinely blocked for reasons only occasionally having to do with the qualifications of the nominee. Lawmakers have learned that they can take a nominee hostage in order to send an ideological message or convince an administration to change a regulation.

Over and above any claims made about the ACA by those trying to destroy it -- almost all of which have been found to hold no water at all -- it is not compromise. Worse, it's unconstitutional, and therefore impossible; and I have to believe the Republicans know this.

Here's why.

The ACA was passed by Congress, signed by the president, and found constitutional by the Supreme Court. It is the law.

The Constitution says Congress must take those steps necessary and proper to put laws into effect, the Constitution says the president's job is to take good care to see the laws are faithfully executed, and the president takes an oath -- written into the Constitution -- to preserve, protect, and defend it.

So Congress has a responsibility to put the ACA into effect -- meaning, among other things, to finance it -- and the president is required by the Constitution to enforce it.