RUSH: Grab sound bite 21. This is Obama this afternoon at Martha’s Table, food pantry. You ever heard of that? I hadn’t, either. Obama’s at Martha’s Table food pantry. He volunteered to make sandwiches for the homeless. So he’s making sandwiches for the homeless at Martha’s Table food pantry. It’s another thing I’ve never heard of. I’ve never heard of a USDA no-money-down buy-a-house program and I’d never heard of Martha’s Table. But Martha’s Table is a food pantry. And so reporters were there obviously to document Obama’s compassion and his caring and his concern for the downtrodden, and he spoke to reporters about the shutdown, and this is what he said.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: We’ve seen this brinksmanship as a strategy time and time again to try to extract extreme or partisan concessions. There are going to be differences between the parties. There are going to be differences in terms of budget priorities, but we don’t need to inflict pain on the American people or risk the possibility that America’s full faith and credit is damaged just because one side is not getting its way.

RUSH: It’s Obama not getting his way. But here, he just admits it: We don’t need to inflict pain on the American people. He’s the one that’s doing it! Because he’s the one that holds the power in Washington. He determines what’s opened and closed during this shutdown in which most is open. There’s only 17% of it that’s shut down. So let’s grab sound bite number one. I was going to play these three earlier. This is an example of how the entire Washington press corps is just totally caught up now, totally swept up in this global catastrophe that is just awaiting us right around the corner. Up first, Good Morning America today Jonathan Karl.

KARL: Lack of any apparent urgency around here is just plain bizarre. There is nothing scheduled at the White House. The Senate doesn’t come back in until two o’clock this afternoon. There are no meetings scheduled, at least not yet, between the major players.

RUSH: Oh, my god! They’re not even talking! No! It’s a catastrophe! The leaders in Washington are not even talking! And, of course, people in America cannot go through the day without the government. People outside the Beltway, they can’t live unless people in Washington are talking to each other. They can’t live. They can’t get through the day unless people are negotiating with each other. There’s no sense of urgency, which is the way it is in negotiations until the last minute. Here’s Robin Roberts also on Good Morning America today, and she’s talking with their economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis about how the stock market is expected to react to Washington.

Now, this is interesting. The regime expected the market to plunge today. They wanted the market to plunge today. The market didn’t plunge today. They are a little discombobulated over this. The market actually came out, opened up. The regime thought it was going to plummet because there’s no urgency, because there are no talks, because there are no negotiations, because the Republicans aren’t talking to anybody, and Obama can’t get them to talk. And the market didn’t panic. But here’s Robin Roberts and Rebecca Jarvis before the market opened, I believe, talking about what they expect to happen.

ROBIN ROBERTS: Wall Street is bracing for the worst this morning with no deal in sight. How will the markets react? It could be an ugly day for your 401(k). ABC’s Rebecca Jarvis is live there on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

JARVIS: This morning the International Monetary Fund is warning of an international global catastrophe.

RUSH: Oh, no! Oh, no!

JARVIS: Massive worldwide disruptions with consequences for all if the US were to default on its debt —

RUSH: Oh, no!

JARVIS: — as we wade into this unprecedented territory.

RUSH: As we speak the Dow Jones industrial average is up 20.29. It’s up; was up a little higher than that. Christine Lagarde, that cadaverous-looking IFM babe, she comes out. Well, she’s got the George Hamilton tan and wrinkles and the white hair. You know, she reminds me of Ma Richards. When I looked at Ann Richards, I said, “Iron your face. Do something. You’re on television.” And I think the same way when I look at this babe. Iron your face. Anyway, she’s out predicting total catastrophe. A total collapse because the United States might blow through its debt limit.

And all of this, folks — again, I’m blue in the face. I don’t know what good it does, but I’m just going to keep telling you: There is no way that we will default on paying our bills unless Obama simply refuses to, because we have the money coming in. The service on the debt every month is about $18 billion. It changes every month, tax revenue changes every month, but on average it’s $200 to $225 billion a month of tax revenue coming in. A lot. We’ve got more than enough.

Thomas Sowell has even written about this. We have more than enough to pay off the interest on the debt every month. There’s no reason for a default… unless Obama directs the Treasury secretary not to make the payments. But there is constitutional law, I think even statutory law, that the president must make the monthly debt payment on the interest of the national debt. That is a law, not that that matters much to this regime. But the money is there. So they set it all up.

I think it’s funny, this Robin Roberts and Rebecca Jarvis: “Oh, no! The IFM’s warning of an international global catastrophe and bracing for an ugly day for your 401(k)!” and the stock market is up. Let me see what it is now. Up 24. It’s up four points since I began this brief little monologue. It didn’t plummet. It didn’t crash. There’s no panic. They can’t believe it. Bret Baier, Fox News, this morning on Fox and Friends. Steve Doocy said, “Give us an update, Bret. Where are we right now? Because it looked like the House had something, looked like the president might go along with it, and then he said, ‘Nope, not interested.’ What’s going on out there?”

BAIER: When we left Friday, you all know the markets had soared. There was this sense in the city that things had headed in the right direction, even for a short-term deal. That kind of disappeared over the weekend as the Senate went back and forth and the negotiations stalled. I tell you, for all of the people who think that there’s just going to be some solutions automatically, there are more people in the camp of, “Wow, this may actually happen.”

RUSH: May actually happen. Yeah, we may actually not be able to expand the debt limit. Wow, it may actually happen! I don’t quite know how to express this but to me… I don’t care who they are. I don’t care whether they’re nominally conservative or full boat conservative or full boat liberal Democrat. Everybody that lives and breathes inside the Beltway, of course, that’s the center of their universe, and whatever happens there is the only thing that’s happening. It’s the only thing of any importance.

So as far as those people are concerned, whether or not the Senate or the House Republicans end up talking to Obama, that’s it. That’s all that matters today. And, of course, for real people, ordinary average people outside the Beltway all over this country, that is not the concern that they’re facing. They’re scared to death and angry over Obamacare. They look at an economy that’s shutting down and doesn’t provide them jobs. They look at the housing market not rebounding.

There is no economic recovery. All that’s going on in Washington is this reporting on a horse race about who will win: “Will Obama finally get his way? Will the US default?” We’re not going to default on our payments, it simply isn’t going to happen, and everything taking place in that town right now is designed to inflict pain on certain people. It doesn’t matter who, just certain groups of people so that the table is set for Republicans to get blamed for it.

But the fact of the matter remains that the people in charge, the people who have been elected have shown — in almost five years now — that they are incompetent. They do not know how to grow an economy, if they’re even trying. They do not know what steps to take to open up the job market, if they even care. They don’t even know how to implement their prized program, Obamacare. They are just glaringly incompetent.

And yet the left looks at them and wants to cut them all kinds of slack because of their good intentions and their big hearts and the fact that they help people. How are they helping people? How is Obama helping anybody? He’s not helping the ranchers in the blizzard, he’s not helping people unemployed — and we’ve got a day of food stamps, 13 hours food stamp cards not working and a near national panic. It’s just mind-boggling.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, the media, folks, the Drive-Bys are just beside themselves. They have all now waited baited breath, because there’s a 3:00 meeting at the White House between Obama and quote/unquote bipartisan congressional leaders. I wonder why they waited until 3:00. But there is this big meeting. CNN seems to think that a deal will be struck. I’ve been watching, and CNN says that Reid and McConnell are optimistic. Uh-oh. Oh, no. Breaking news update!

Oh, no. The 3:00 p.m. Eastern time meeting with congressional leaders has been postponed to allow Senate leaders more time for talks. Well, either Reid and McConnell are really close and they need more time to nail it down or they’re not close. Or maybe Obama needs more photo op time at the food bank. I don’t know. But the 3:00 meeting is postponed. Interesting it was scheduled for 3:00, isn’t it? Obama and bipartisan congressional leaders scheduled it for 3:00. Reid and McConnell are supposedly close to a deal, but now it’s been moved.