President Barack Obama on Tuesday tried to raise the pressure on Republicans to vote to reopen "significant risk of a very deep recession."

Mr. Obama, speaking from the White House on the eighth day of the government shutdown, said he is willing to talk with Republicans but only after they pass legislation to fund the government and raise the debt limit.

"I am happy to talk with [House Speaker John Boehner] and other Republicans about anything," Mr. Obama said he told Mr. Boehner in a phone conversation earlier Tuesday. "But, I also told him that having such a conversation, talks, negotiations, shouldn’t require hanging the threats of an economic shutdown, or economic chaos, over the heads of the American people."

House Republicans have stepped up calls for face-to-face negotiations with Democrats and Mr. Obama, whom they blame for the shutdown, but there’s been little progress that the government would reopen as the two sides remain at odds. Mr. Boehner, of Ohio, has turned to calls for negotiations after pressing GOP priorities in numerous bills on government funding in recent weeks, both before and after the shutdown.

(Published by The Wall Street Journal – October 8, 2013)