Good to have you here today - another beautiful day here

in Washington, D.C., the nation's capital.

Fabulous weather.

I have a lot of toppers and I'm going to top with this one.

My first topper is, on Monday, September 23, the Vice President

and Dr. Jill Biden will travel to Colorado to view damage from

recent flooding and survey recovery efforts there.

The Vice President's office will be releasing additional

information as we get closer to Monday.

That's topper number one.

Topper number two, on Tuesday, President Obama will travel

to New York to attend the Clinton Global Initiative, where

he and President Clinton will engage in a conversation about

the benefits and future of health care reform in America

and access to quality health care around the globe.

I know that was confusing -- I said that he'll

travel to New York.

He will be in New York, as you know,

for the United Nations General Assembly.

Secondly, as you all know, following on the announcement

that he'll be having this conversation with former

President Clinton about the benefits and future of health

care reform, this conversation will take place one week before

the health insurance marketplaces open for business,

and Americans who do not currently have insurance will

be able to sign up for affordable, quality health plans

that meet their needs.

This conversation between the two Presidents will follow

up on the health care speech President Clinton gave

in Arkansas in early September and is part of a ramped-up

public education effort to reach Americans who want to sign

up for new affordable options in the health insurance

marketplaces from October through March.

Finally, today the Senate Judiciary Committee approved

Nina Pillard's nomination to be a judge

on the U.S. Court of Appeals for

the District of Columbia circuit.

There are now two highly qualified nominees for this

court pending before the full Senate, and we urge

their prompt confirmation.

As you may know, Pillard's career includes landmark

accomplishments on behalf of women and families.

She helped defend the constitutionality

of the Family and Medical Leave Act and helped open the doors

of the Virginia Military Institute to female students.

Today, Pillard is a professor at Georgetown Law School.

And I would remind you that the D.C. circuit has a strong

tradition of judges who were previously innovative scholars,

and that would include Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Some Republicans continue to cynically raise arguments about

that court's workload, even though the court is more

than a quarter vacant today.

During the last administration, these very same senators

confirmed judges to the 9th, 10th, and 11th seats on this

very same court.

And earlier this year, these same senators confirmed judges

to circuit courts with fewer pending appeals per active judge

than is the case at the D.C. Circuit.

Right now there are 14 judicial nominees pending in the Senate,

including 12 who have the unanimous support

of the Judiciary Committee, and we urge the Senate to consider

Nina Pillard's nomination and all of the President's judicial

nominees without delay.

That was a lot of toppers, and maybe we can just wrap it up.

Or I'll take your questions.

Yes.

The Press: I appreciate it.

Thanks, Jay.

Today, House Speaker John Boehner said the House won't

vote to increase the debt limit without including some spending

cuts to reduce the deficit.

Is the President willing to give them?

Mr. Carney: The President has been and is willing to negotiate

with Republicans over a broad compromise on budget,

on funding and spending.

He has put forward his own proposal to do that.

And he urges Congress to act to make sure the government does

not shut down and continues to be funded, and, if necessary,

to pass a short-term extension of funding at current levels

in order to allow for further negotiations

on a broader budget agreement.

I would note that, in keeping with his promises,

and the Democrats, in keeping with their promises,

the President submitted a budget that represented compromise

and tough choices for Democrats, with broad-based deficit

reduction achieved through a balanced approach.

The Senate passed its own budget, as Republican leaders

insisted they must.

At the time, Republican leaders said we have to have regular

order; we have to have a situation where the House passes

a budget, the Senate passes a budget, and then, in accordance

with regular order, a conference is established

and a product is produced.

Except when that happened, and the Senate passed a budget,

the House decided it did not want to join in a conference,

and the House Republican leaders have refused to name conferees

for the budget now for about six months.

So that's a laying-down of the facts here when it comes

to the President's willingness to compromise to achieve

resolution and find common ground on budget issues.

And he looks forward to doing that in the future.

On the matter of debt ceiling, the answer is, no, we will

negotiate over Congress's responsibility to pay the bills

that Congress incurred -- Congress's responsibility

enshrined in the United States Constitution, which gives

Congress power over the purse strings here in this country,

to responsibly ensure that we do not default,

that the United States is good -- is true to its word and that

our full faith and credit will be upheld.

It's unconscionable to imagine that there are those

in the Congress -- and now, apparently, because he couldn't

persuade them otherwise, the Speaker of the House has joined

them, who believe that it is the right thing to do to threaten

another recession, threaten economic calamity in this

country and the globe, over their ideological desire

to defund or delay the Affordable Care Act.

We've had this battle.

That's how it works: You write legislation; you propose

legislation; you pass legislation.

It becomes law.

If people think it's inappropriate

or unconstitutional, they take it to the Supreme Court --

through the court system to the Supreme Court.

In this case, that's what happened and the Supreme Court

upheld the law, and we're implementing the law.

And if members of the Republican Party want to continue to try

to overturn the law through legislation, they can --

they have been doing that nonstop for

the past several years.

But they should not hold the full faith and credit

of the United States hostage to their insistence that they get

what they want in a manner that they couldn't

get through legislation.

That's our position.

The Press: Will the White House urge House Democrats to vote

for a clean debt ceiling, even though it would be at a level

reflecting a continuation of the sequester?

Mr. Carney: As I said the other day and I think as recently

as yesterday, and I think the SAP that we put out,

the Statement of Administration Policy, says that we would

be willing to accept a so-called clean CR at current spending

levels for several months to allow for continued negotiations

over a broader budget deal.

What we won't accept is further cuts in important

investments in our economy.

I think it's worth noting that the Republican --

House Republican budget approach enshrined in the Ryan budget was

rejected by House Republicans, who could not even pass

a transportation and housing bill out of committee.

I think that demonstrates that the Ryan budget is not

acceptable even among House Republicans.

But to answer your question, we would accept a clean CR for

a short term in order to continue the negotiations over

how we can find agreement over funding the government,

ensuring that we're protecting the middle class and helping

it grow, that we're creating jobs, and that we're reducing

our deficit in a responsible way.

What Speaker Boehner didn't note in his presentation today

is that the deficit has been coming down dramatically.

It has been coming down and is now slated to be half the size

it was when the President took office -- despite the enormous

economic challenges that our nation faced when the President

did take office and all that we had to do to avert a depression.

But there is more work to be done.

And we can responsibly reduce our deficit in the mid and long

term, and fund our necessary priorities to help the economy

grow, and help the middle class, and create good-paying jobs here

in the United States through investments in education

and innovation, research and development and infrastructure.

We just have to do it in a responsible way.

And we can't go to the nation -- or we shouldn't --

they shouldn't go to the nation and say, we couldn't get this

through normal means, so we're going to threaten your job,

your welfare, your security and future, so that we can defund

Obamacare, or delay it -- a proposition which would actually

increase the deficit.

So this is supposed to be all about spending, but they want

to increase the deficit to get what they --

what their ideology demands.

And I think we've seen, not just coming from here but from all

corners, including many corners within the Republican Party,

the view that this is a bad idea.

It's bad for the economy.

It's bad for the middle class.

It's bad for the Republican Party.

Obviously that's for Republican Party leaders and members

to sort out, what's good for them politically.

What we know is that this approach

is bad for the American people.

The Press: Can you just talk about Sunday?

Is there any more you can tell us about the President's plans

at the memorial service?

Is he going to speak, and might we hear anything about gun

control, like after Newtown?

Mr. Carney: I don't have a preview beyond what

I announced yesterday.

I think the President might speak, but I don't have anything

more specific than that to say about it.

When we have more information we'll provide it.

The Press: On Syria, in his interview with Fox,

President Assad said that he thought it would cost about

a billion dollars to destroy Syria's stockpile

of chemical weapons, and he suggested that the United States

should pay for it.

I'm wondering is the United States willing to finance

the cost of destruction of --

Mr. Carney: A couple of things.

He also said that somebody else was responsible for mass murder

of civilians using chemical weapons, including children.

And I suppose if you use poison gas to murder your own people,

including the children of your own nation, you probably

would deny it publicly.

We're working with the Russians on a framework that

Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov worked out with

their teams to implement a program that would identify,

verify and remove from Assad's control the chemical weapon

stockpiles in that country.

And this is obviously a complicated piece of business.

I don't have a cost figure associated with it.

What I can tell you is that it would be in the interest

of the Syrian people, the interest of the people

of the region, the interest of the United States and the people

of the world to see those chemical weapon stockpiles

safely removed from Syria -- removed from Assad's control

and destroyed, so that he cannot use them again in the deplorably

indiscriminate way that he used them against his own people.

The Press: So when it comes, though, to the cost

of doing that --

Mr. Carney: The folks working on the details of the plans might

have more information about what it would take, what it will take

to bring about the identification and transfer

and ultimate destruction of the chemical weapons.

And we're working with our teams on that.

But two things I would say -- is that the use of those weapons