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US President Barack Obama said on Thursday that Americans are "completely fed up with Washington" a day after the latest fiscal crisis was narrowly averted and called for talks with Congress on the budget, immigration and farm legislation.
Hours after he signed into law a hastily arranged bill to end a 16-day government shutdown and head off a debt default, Obama said events over the past two weeks had inflicted "completely unnecessary" damage on the US economy.
Obama, having emerged bruised but victorious from the latest in a string of fiscal stalemates in Washington, issued an aggressive challenge to Congress, particularly the Republican-controlled House of Representatives: Get to work with him on issues critical to improving the economy.
"Now that the government is re-opened and this threat to our economy is removed, all of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists and the bloggers and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict and focus on what the majority of Americans sent us here to do," he said.
