Vice President Joe Biden has been a non-factor in the debt and budget fight so far. The last news wire photos of him came ten days ago, and he hasn't made any public statements about the standoff that has gripped Washington If Republicans were bluffing over Obamacare and the debt ceiling, it's now the Democrats' turn to play high-stakes poker. And the notoriously gaffe-prone Joe Biden has been called back from his Camp David vacation to put the screws on the GOP. The White House issued a statement on Monday saying that Obama would remind congressional leaders in the Oval Office at 3:00 p.m. that he 'will not pay a ransom for Congress reopening the government and raising the debt limit.'
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Biden hadn't been seen in D.C. for ten days and was vacationing at Camp David all weekend
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Senate and House leaders from both parties were summoned to the Oval Office for a Monday meeting that was later postponed
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The White House hopes the extra time will allow Senate Democratic and Republican leaders hash out a compromise
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The meeting, when it occurs, will help Obama pressure House Speaker John Boehner, by then the lone remaining holdout
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The federal government has been partially in shutdown mode since Oct. 1 and a debt crisis looms just three days from now
'This whole shutdown has been completely unnecessary,' Obama told reporters during an unscheduled stop Monday afternoon at a @placeholder, D. C. soup kitchen, complaining that ''we've seen this brinksmanship time and time again to try and extract extreme partisan concessions.'