With Congress and President Obama deadlocked in contentious battle over Obamacare and a possible U.S. default looming, Republican Sen. Rob Portman predicted that the two sides would come together by Thursday — the deadline for lawmakers to increase the nation's debt limit.
"We will have decided as a Congress that we need to avoid going over the debt limit and we'll figure it out," Portman said on "Meet The Press" on Sunday. "And it'll probably be a relatively short-term solution."
The Ohio Republican said that he believes lawmakers would also come to an agreement on the Affordable Care Act and end the partial government shutdown that began on Oct. 1.
"I oppose ObamaCare, I think we ought to repeal it and replace it. And I think most Americans agree with that," Portman said. "But we can minimize the damage in this process by doing certain things that were consistent with the original ObamaCare. ... I'm not suggesting there'll be a solution to all these long-term problems in the next two days. But I do think that we'll figure out a way to put off this, to have the discussion, and I'm hopeful we'll do that actually in the next couple days."
