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President Barack Obama furiously responded Friday to congressional budget battles that could threaten a partial government shutdown, accusing Republicans voting against his health care law of focusing on politics and "holding the whole country hostage." Locked in a stalemate with lawmakers over spending and borrowing with less than two weeks until the start of the new budget year, the president returned to a fiery campaign mode to take his critics to task. He said Republicans must stop focusing on defunding his health care law, pass a budget and raise the nation's borrowing limit to head off a first-ever default on the nation's debt. "We're not some banana republic. This isn't some deadbeat nation," Obama said before workers on a sprawling auto plant floor in Missouri. "We don't run out on our tab. We're the world's bedrock investment. The entire world looks to us to make sure the world economy is stable. We can't just not pay our bills. And even threating something like that is the height of irresponsibility." Congress faces two financial deadlines in the coming weeks. Funding for the government is set to run out at the end of September, and the government will reach the limits of its borrowing authority a few weeks later. | 
