President Barack Obama demanded an end to a three-day government shutdown he decried as a reckless "farce," piling pressure on Republicans to climb down first on a budget impasse.
The US Treasury meanwhile warned of "catastrophic" consequences if there is no deal within weeks to raise the country's debt ceiling, and the IMF chief said navigating a way out of that next crisis was "mission critical."
Obama traveled to the Washington suburbs to lambast Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who emerged from a White House meeting late on Wednesday complaining that the president would not negotiate with him.
"Take a vote, stop this farce and end this shutdown right now," Obama said during a fiery speech in the Maryland suburb of Rockville, which is home to many federal workers laid off in the shutdown.
Branding the crisis a "reckless Republican shutdown," Obama said that Boehner could reopen the government and get hundreds of thousands of people back to work "in just five minutes" by passing a temporary operating budget with no partisan strings attached.
"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 government ran out of money on Monday, after Congress failed to pass a budget, forcing authorities to send all non-essential workers home and to close museums, monuments and national parks that are all popular with tourists.
The Democratic-led Senate had turned back repeated Republican efforts to pass a budget while defunding or delaying Obama's health care law, which is a centerpiece of his political legacy and reviled by Tea Party conservatives.
The talks at the White House between Obama and congressional leaders made no progress, and there is no sign that the dispute will be solved before dragging into a second week.
The crisis rattled Wall Street on Thursday, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 136.66 points (0.90 percent) to 14,996.48, amid ongoing jitters from the shutdown and nervousness about a looming battle over Congress's responsibility to raise the $16.7 trillion US statutory borrowing limit.
If there is no resolution before October 17, the government could begin running out of money to pay its bills and an unprecedented US debt default could result.
But Republicans are again demanding concessions on Obamacare before voting to raise the debt ceiling, raising fears of unpredictable consequences, which the Treasury said in a report Thursday could plunge the United States into deep recession and rock global markets.
"In the event that a debt limit impasse were to lead to a default, it could have a catastrophic effect on not just financial markets but also on job creation, consumer spending and economic growth," the report said.
"Credit markets could freeze, the value of the dollar could plummet, US interest rates could skyrocket, the negative spillovers could reverberate around the world, and there might be a financial crisis and recession that could echo the events of 2008 or worse."
International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde said finding a way out of the debt limit dead end as soon as possible was "mission critical."
The New York Times reported Thursday that Boehner had privately told House Republicans that he understood the dangers of a default and was ready to pass a debt limit increase with the help of minority Democrats if necessary.
Obama has refused to negotiate with Republicans over raising the debt ceiling, saying Congress is simply authorizing borrowing to pay bills it has already run up and that offering concessions would set a poor precedent for future presidents.
This time's different
In the minds of key players on Capitol Hill, the government shutdown and the debt ceiling fight have now merged into one massive political crisis.
There was some talk among Republicans that Boehner may try to craft a face-saving way out by reviving a stalled drive for a "grand bargain" on debt and spending with Obama.
But there is skepticism on the Democratic side that there is time to pull together a pact -- following repeated failed attempts in Obama's first term -- before the debt limit deadline.
The president was meanwhile wrestling with whether to cancel the rest of an already truncated Asia trip that would see him leave on Saturday for the APEC summit in Bali, Indonesia and the East Asia summit in Brunei.
Lawmakers meanwhile could pass a measure on Friday which will see federal workers receive back pay for the period when they have been off work since the shutdown.
Members of the House of Representatives and Senate filed bills that would ensure all federal employees receive retroactive pay for the duration of the workstop.
"They deserve their pay, not financial punishment," House Democrat James Moran said in a statement.
วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 3 ตุลาคม พ.ศ. 2556
Factbox: The political life of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is struggling to emerge from the shadow of his flamboyant predecessor Hugo Chavez at the helm of the South American OPEC nation.
Here are some facts about Maduro:
* The burly, mustachioed Maduro, 50, is a former union leader and Caracas bus driver. He does not have a university degree and proudly calls himself Venezuela's first "worker president."
* Maduro entered politics in 1998 when he won a seat in parliament. His combative defense of Chavez's policies made him one of the socialist leader's proteges.
* He rose to become president of the assembly, a post later occupied by his wife, Cilia Flores, a lawyer. When Chavez was imprisoned after a 1992 coup attempt, Flores led the legal team that won his freedom two years later.
* Maduro first met Chavez during a visit to him in jail in 1993. "That day, December 16, 1993, I made a spiritual commitment to him. I will follow that man wherever he goes, I told myself. And that's the way it was."
* As foreign minister for six years starting in 2006, Maduro faithfully expounded Chavez's views around the world, including critiques of global affairs from a hard left-wing stance. Despite often fiery rhetoric, he won plaudits for his affable style, and cultivated important friendships in Russia and China.
* Chavez, who had cancer, named Maduro vice president in late 2012. A few weeks later Chavez endorsed Maduro as his heir. Chavez reveled in Maduro's working class roots. "He was a bus driver. How they mock him, the bourgeoisie!" Chavez laughed.
* Chavez's naming of Maduro quelled the ambitions of other powerful figures in the ruling Socialist Party, such as National Assembly head Diosdado Cabello. It also helped Maduro win a six-year term as president in an election in April after Chavez's death in March, although the margin of victory was much narrower than expected.
* Although public about his Roman Catholic faith, Maduro has also been a follower of the late Indian spiritual guru Sai Baba, whom he and Flores visited in 2005.
* A keen baseball player in his youth, Maduro also used to play guitar in heavy rock bands.
* Maduro has been unabashed about declaring himself a "son" and "apostle" of Chavez. He lacks his mentor's charisma but he has sought to emulate his man-of-the-people political persona, kissing babies, greeting workers and occasionally bursting into song during near-daily live TV broadcasts.
* Maduro delighted supporters, and drew mockery from critics, when he said Chavez's spirit visited him in the form of a bird that sang to him while he was praying. He also said he sometimes sleeps in the mausoleum where Chavez's remains lie.
* Presenting himself as the heir to "Chavismo," Maduro has vowed to extend and deepen Chavez's "21st century socialism." He has been short on new policy initiatives, however.
* At times, Maduro has been just as hardline as his mentor, thundering at internal opponents and the U.S. "empire". At others, he has appeared to offer olive branches, for example calling for dialogue with Washington and sitting down with private business leaders whom Chavez used to demonize.
* Although clearly not commanding the international reputation that Chavez had, Maduro has sought to maintain ties with "anti-imperialist" allies such as Cuba and China.
* Maduro has made a series of verbal gaffes, the most embarrassing when alluding to the Biblical miracle of Jesus feeding the multitude. He spoke of a multiplication of "penises" instead of "fishes", muddling "penes" and "peces" in Spanish.
* In contrast to Chavez's meticulously-documented childhood, little is known about Maduro's early days. Though the opposition claim he was born just over the border in Colombia and are demanding Maduro display a legitimate birth certificate, the president says he was born in a poor neighborhood of Caracas.
* Maduro says he was politicized during the 1960s and 1970s in student protests and clashes with the police around the Venezuela Central University, near his home. In one interview, he said he joined a radical student organization aged just 12.
(Editing by Daniel Wallis and Grant McCool)
Here are some facts about Maduro:
* The burly, mustachioed Maduro, 50, is a former union leader and Caracas bus driver. He does not have a university degree and proudly calls himself Venezuela's first "worker president."
* Maduro entered politics in 1998 when he won a seat in parliament. His combative defense of Chavez's policies made him one of the socialist leader's proteges.
* He rose to become president of the assembly, a post later occupied by his wife, Cilia Flores, a lawyer. When Chavez was imprisoned after a 1992 coup attempt, Flores led the legal team that won his freedom two years later.
* Maduro first met Chavez during a visit to him in jail in 1993. "That day, December 16, 1993, I made a spiritual commitment to him. I will follow that man wherever he goes, I told myself. And that's the way it was."
* As foreign minister for six years starting in 2006, Maduro faithfully expounded Chavez's views around the world, including critiques of global affairs from a hard left-wing stance. Despite often fiery rhetoric, he won plaudits for his affable style, and cultivated important friendships in Russia and China.
* Chavez, who had cancer, named Maduro vice president in late 2012. A few weeks later Chavez endorsed Maduro as his heir. Chavez reveled in Maduro's working class roots. "He was a bus driver. How they mock him, the bourgeoisie!" Chavez laughed.
* Chavez's naming of Maduro quelled the ambitions of other powerful figures in the ruling Socialist Party, such as National Assembly head Diosdado Cabello. It also helped Maduro win a six-year term as president in an election in April after Chavez's death in March, although the margin of victory was much narrower than expected.
* Although public about his Roman Catholic faith, Maduro has also been a follower of the late Indian spiritual guru Sai Baba, whom he and Flores visited in 2005.
* A keen baseball player in his youth, Maduro also used to play guitar in heavy rock bands.
* Maduro has been unabashed about declaring himself a "son" and "apostle" of Chavez. He lacks his mentor's charisma but he has sought to emulate his man-of-the-people political persona, kissing babies, greeting workers and occasionally bursting into song during near-daily live TV broadcasts.
* Maduro delighted supporters, and drew mockery from critics, when he said Chavez's spirit visited him in the form of a bird that sang to him while he was praying. He also said he sometimes sleeps in the mausoleum where Chavez's remains lie.
* Presenting himself as the heir to "Chavismo," Maduro has vowed to extend and deepen Chavez's "21st century socialism." He has been short on new policy initiatives, however.
* At times, Maduro has been just as hardline as his mentor, thundering at internal opponents and the U.S. "empire". At others, he has appeared to offer olive branches, for example calling for dialogue with Washington and sitting down with private business leaders whom Chavez used to demonize.
* Although clearly not commanding the international reputation that Chavez had, Maduro has sought to maintain ties with "anti-imperialist" allies such as Cuba and China.
* Maduro has made a series of verbal gaffes, the most embarrassing when alluding to the Biblical miracle of Jesus feeding the multitude. He spoke of a multiplication of "penises" instead of "fishes", muddling "penes" and "peces" in Spanish.
* In contrast to Chavez's meticulously-documented childhood, little is known about Maduro's early days. Though the opposition claim he was born just over the border in Colombia and are demanding Maduro display a legitimate birth certificate, the president says he was born in a poor neighborhood of Caracas.
* Maduro says he was politicized during the 1960s and 1970s in student protests and clashes with the police around the Venezuela Central University, near his home. In one interview, he said he joined a radical student organization aged just 12.
(Editing by Daniel Wallis and Grant McCool)
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