President Barack Obama has urged Congress to raise the country's debt limit, saying America is "not a deadbeat nation" and needs to pay its bills.
Mr Obama addressed reporters at the White House Monday in what is likely the final news conference of his first term to discuss his upcoming battle with Republicans over the country's debt ceiling.
Raising the debt limit "is not a question of authorising more spending," Mr Obama said. "It simply allows the country to pay for spending Congress has already approved."
"If congressional Republicans refuse to pay the bills on time it would be a self-inflicted wound on the economy," he added.
The president also addressed other issues on his agenda, including the administration's efforts to curb gun violence in the wake of last month's shooting massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.
Mr Obama said he will meet Vice President Joe Biden, who will recommend a series "sensible, common sense steps" that can be taken. The president said he will present specifics later in the week.
Mr Biden led a panel tasked with creating proposals to reduce violence after the December shooting that killed 20 children and six educators.
The president said stronger background checks, a meaningful ban on assault weapons and limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines are all ideas he thinks make sense. He added that he is not sure how many of those measures can pass Congress.
On the debt ceiling, Mr Obama said Republicans who want to dramatically cut spending in return for raising US borrowing limits "will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the economy".
He said: "The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not a bargaining chip. And they better decide quickly because time is running short."
"We are not a deadbeat nation," he declared.
Until the partisan fight over the debt ceiling broke out in 2011, the limit on borrowing had been increased by Congress as a matter of course.
But with a surge in Tea Party Republicans elected to the House of Representatives in 2010, the opposition party has sought to use the power over the debt to enforce its desires for smaller government and spending cuts.
Mr Obama said he was willing to consider future deficit cuts, but only if they are done independently from a vote to raise the $16.4trn (£10.2trn) debt limit.
The president spoke less than a week before his inauguration for a second term, and several days after he signed legislation that narrowly averted a "fiscal cliff" of automatic spending cuts and across-the-board tax increases.
Combined with other bills he signed earlier in the term, he said he and Congress have reduced deficits by about $2.5trn over a decade, somewhat less than the $4trn he said is necessary to get them down to a manageable size.
Failure to raise the debt limit would put the United States into a first-ever default, a step that Mr Obama said could "blow up the economy".
Congressional Democrats have recently urged the president to lift the debt limit unilaterally. He said - as he has before - that he will not do it, that Congress had voted for the spending that resulted in federal borrowing, and should now agree to pay the bill.
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