Will the American public hold President Obama responsible for the 2013 government shutdown? Could his refusal to negotiate be considered a dereliction of duty?

Uh, that train left the station ten months ago.  That dog won't hun...

The American Public does not believe that defaulting on our debt or using the threat of a default as a negotiating tool is a responsible position.  Quite the contrary.  You would think the GOP and even the OP would have learned this lesson by now but maybe not.    In many ways, things are looking pretty good politically  for the GOP these days.  Growth has stagnated again and the odds of the GOP's taking the Senate seem to be increasing.  The House appears to be utterly safe.  The only thing that could screw things up would be if the party committed some huge blunder.  So of course, their response  is to talk about defaulting on our debt unless Obama and the Dems agree to defund and/or delay Obamacare.  Foot meet shooting yourself.    I was told ad nasum by my friends on the right that the Tea Party would be the savior of our nation.  They may be right but I don't think this is what they had in mind.

The only irresponsible position is that of those who wish to challenge the full faith and credit of the United States. Defaulting on our debt will cost billions and will serve no purpose. Just the threat of a default imposed by the Tea Party (and members of the Republican party heavily influenced by the Tea Party) last time we approached the debt ceiling caused Standard and Poor's to downgrade the United States' credit rating. Lower credit ratings lead to higher borrowing costs. We will pay $237 billion this fiscal year in interest on our debt. (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Frsc.scalise.house.gov%2Fuploadedfiles%2Frsc_budget_cut_cap_and_balance--long_doc--final.pdf&ei=mm83UqbFMtLh4AOe9oHwBw&usg=AFQjCNF7Nz4xNzwUPi84k4JBfzd1tKqpUQ&sig2=ETqMrxFoalKAkR1jhBuglA&bvm=bv.52164340%2Cd.dmg&cad=rja) Threat of a default stands to significantly increase future borrowing costs. This is not about a moral objection to debt, despite what members of the House GOP will say. Let's take a look at past House GOP debt ceiling votes. 2002: 211 House Republicans vote yes. 2003: 214 House Republicans vote yes. 2004: 206 House Republicans vote yes. 2006: 214 House Republicans vote yes. 2007: 0 House Republicans vote yes. 2009: 0 House Republicans vote yes. 2009 (again): 0 House Republicans vote yes. So what happened at the end of 2006? Democrats took control of the House. It is and (under this structure) will forever be the burden of the party in power to approve debt ceiling increases. Obama himself objected to the debt ceiling being raised as a senator, a fact conservatives love bringing up. As the majority, House GOP either approves the debt ceiling or begins a worldwide fiscal crisis. Never before has the majority party appeared willing to do the latter. Realistically, I'm not too worried about a default. Boehner isn't an idiot, even if some members of his party are, and I'm sure he could scrape together 15-20 'Yes' votes from Wall-Street friendly congressmen, and that's all he'd need, since Democrats would obviously vote in favor of a bill increasing the debt limit with no strings attached. I'll close with a quote. “I think raising the debt limit is the responsible thing to do for our country,  the responsible thing for our economy. If we were  to fail to increase the debt limit, we would send our economy into a  tailspin.” - John Boehner, March 2011

The question should be, when will American voters hold the Republicans responsible for their irresponsible actions of holding the federal government and thereby the economy, hostage, especially for what most people agree is a risky, yet worthless bravado, and for what is obviously a cheap political move, as it makes no sense for Congress to approve a budget containing a deficit and then separately refuse to write the check. Republicans not once attempted this under the dozen times with Reagan or Bush and not even under Clinton. It is being a very bad sport for losing in the Presidential race and it is proving they are a party unfit to govern, each time their leadership refuses to break away from Tea Party extremists who ran a on a ridiculous premise of hating the federal government and then, when elected, seem to forget that they are the federal government.

Lets see: 1. It is Congress's job to write a budget and send it to the president, a vital responsibility that has not happened in years. The president can PROPOSE a budget, but it holds no weight unless Congress agrees to go along with it. 2. Prior to Congress just deciding not to do its job it had this nasty habit of sending budgets to the President that had WAY more expenditures than income. Sure the president could have vetoed, but it would just be easier if Congress could do basic math because by the time it gets in front of the president the hurdles to "fix it" are often too great. 3. The president MUST spend the money in the budget Congress gives him, its his job. Its not like the president is this drunk running around willy-nilly with the countries credit card. No, he has been directly told what to spend and how. 4. The debt ceiling is a political ploy. Congress gets to blame the president for a mess he is not allowed by law to fix, in which they are the only one who can fix it, that they created in the first place, and that they can use to try to force the president to give them political concessions. Regardless of what the president does Congress will continue use the debt ceiling as a political hot potato because its a building full of irresponsible children that would rather play chicken with the world's economy than act like adults and purpose a common sense budget in the first place. This is not just a criticism of this Congress, its a criticism of every Congress going back to Andrew Jackson's presidency. Sadly it seems there are too many people in this country that are politically active that did not pay attention in 9th grade civics.

Your question assumes that his positions are irresponsible. I see that you changed the question, but there's still an inherent assumption.

While I think Obama should be prosecuted (along with the "honorable" Senator Roy Blunt) for his treason of signing the Monsanto Protection Act into "law"... I do NOT think his refusal to "negotiate" with those threatening th freeze the government or those trying to gut universal health care is a problem.

These are the numbers from the White House       Year       Tax receipts          Spending          Deficit       1992          1,091,208          1,381,529         -290,321       1993          1,154,335          1,409,386         -255,051       1994          1,258,566          1,461,753         -203,186       1995          1,351,790          1,515,742         -163,952       1996          1,453,053          1,560,484         -107,431       1997          1,579,232          1,601,116          -21,884       1998          1,721,728          1,652,458           69,270       1999          1,827,452          1,701,842         125,610       2000          2,025,191          1,788,950         236,241       2001          1,991,082          1,862,846         128,236       2002          1,853,136          2,010,894        -157,758       2003          1,782,314          2,159,899        -377,585       2004          1,880,114          2,292,841        -412,727       2005          2,153,611          2,471,957        -318,346       2006          2,406,869          2,655,050        -248,181       2007          2,567,985          2,728,686        -160,701       2008          2,523,991          2,982,544        -458,553       2009          2,104,989          3,517,677     -1,412,688       2010          2,162,706          3,457,079     -1,294,373       2011          2,303,466          3,603,059     -1,299,593       2012          2,450,164          3,537,127     -1,086,963       2013   estimate   2,712,045  3,684,947       -972,902       2014   estimate   3,033,618  3,777,807       -744,189       2015   estimate   3,331,685  3,908,157       -576,472       2016   estimate   3,561,451  4,089,836       -528,385                          Tax receipts    Spending             Deficit "2001 to 2008     17,159,102    19,164,717       -2,005,615 "2009 to 2016     21,660,124    29,575,689       -7,915,565 With his numbers we will end his term 2016 over $18Tin debt.  We will end 2018 with somewhere close to $21t in debts Just as a side note I have to make a businessman, these growth numbers are astounding.  Almost any tragedy or war can be financed out of growth. Bush didn't do a good job balancing the budget.  Granted he was in a war economy, Katrina and he left office with an economic tragedy that cost him dearly in the last year , but a $2T deficit is horrendous. BHO in the other hand averages a trillion dollar deficit a year, with ending conflicts and only the NJ hurricane as an economic disruption. The spending has not stimulated the economy back to even 2007 levels of tax receipts. And he says he will not negotiate any reductions in spending.  We have been operating the government under CR his entire presidency.  The man refuses to manage. By the way, his tax receipts line is a complete fantasy.  By my calculation he would have to create 3.9m new millionaires between now and 2018 to accomplish that.  With these more realistic numbers we will have added a stunning $10t to debt in Obama's 8 years. I don't think the term irresponsible adequately describes the man.. Child psychology has a term however,He does not play well with other children

This is a terrible question. The Republican Congresses during Obama’s terms have stated their desire to make him a failed president. They have proposed nonsensical, one-sided ‘symbolic’ legislation that no one in their right mind would expect to pass. It hasn’t passed or it has been vetoed.If Obama were to be held responsible for Republicans’ actions, then it would be because the people responsible for explaining the situation were dishonest and the people hearing the explanations were gullible. Once you start looking at the public as a bunch of idiots, then there really isn’t much that our politics can do for you.