By JENNIFER EPSTEIN |
10/6/13 9:39 AM EDT

House Speaker John Boehner says he wasn't pulled into demanding concessions from Democrats to keep funding the government - he willingly joined with fellow Republicans.

"I and my members decided that the threat of Obamacare and what was happening was so important that it was time for us to take a stand. And we took a stand," the Ohio Republican said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

That's even though he had offered a clean government funding bill to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) over the summer. "There was a conversation about doing this ... several," Boehner said, but he ultimately decided against it.

"I, working with my members, decided to do this in a unified way," the speaker said -- with demands to defund, delay or otherwise alter the Affordable Care Act.

Boehner had expected that the Obamacare fight would come during the next vote to raise the debt ceiling, “but, you know, working with my members, they decided, let's do it now," he said. "And the fact is, this fight was going to come, one way or another. We’re in the fight. We don't want to shut the government down. We’ve passed bills to pay the troops. We passed bills to make sure the federal employees know that they're going to be paid throughout this.”

"You've never seen a more dedicated group of people who are thoroughly concerned about the future of our country," he said of House Republicans. "It is time for us to stand and fight."


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