US President Barack Obama has said that Americans are "completely fed up with Washington" a day after the latest fiscal crisis was narrowly averted.
In a live address, Obama called for talks with Congress on the budget, immigration and farm legislation.
Hours after he signed into law a hastily arranged bill to end a 16-day government shutdown and head off a debt default, Obama said events over the past two weeks had inflicted “completely unnecessary" damage on the US economy.
Obama, having emerged bruised but victorious from the latest in a string of fiscal stalemates in Washington, issued an aggressive challenge to Congress, particularly the Republican-controlled House of Representatives: Get to work with him on issues critical to improving the economy.
"Now that the government is re-opened and this threat to our economy is removed, all of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists and the bloggers and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict and focus on what the majority of Americans sent us here to do," he said.
Declaring that "the American people are completely fed up with Washington," Obama sought to tap into American disgust with Washington to advance his agenda and argue that after more than two weeks of shutdown, people have seen that the federal government is vital to their lives.
The agenda he laid out for the rest of the year appeared to presage more partisan combat. He called for House action on two major items that cleared the Democratic-controlled Senate earlier this year but collapsed in the House: an overhaul of the US immigration system and passage of a $500 billion farm bill.
Obama also renewed his plea for a "balanced approach" to the US budget - language that means he wants to see some sources of new revenue in the budget such as closing corporate tax loopholes instead of simply enacting cuts in government spending.
House Republicans have ruled out tax increases.
"I understand we will not suddenly agree on everything now that the cloud of crisis has passed.
“Democrats and Republicans are far apart on a lot of issues," he said.
"And sometimes we'll be just too far apart to forge an agreement. But that should not hold back our efforts in areas where we do agree."
US parties begin fresh budget talks
Meanwhile, US budget negotiators have already kicked off a new round of talks on government taxes and spending.
Meeting for breakfast, Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and his Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Patty Murray, said they would explore every avenue to reach a longer-term deal to reduce deficits and replace automatic "sequester" spending cuts.
"Our job over the next eight weeks is to find out what we can agree on, and we have agreed that we are going to look at everything in front of us. It's going to be a challenge," said Murray, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee.
Both Murray and Ryan said they do not have a specific savings target in mind yet for the panel, which was explicitly set up in yesterday’s deal to end the shutdown and lift the debt limit.
The panel has a 13 December deadline to make recommendations.
While there are no direct consequences if the committee fails to meet this deadline, Congress has only approved government funding through 15 January, so another shutdown threat looms if there is no fiscal agreement.
Past deficit commissions and negotiating panels have a dismal track record, most notably the failure of a 2011 "supercommittee" to find $1.5 trillion in budget savings.
Rather than an elusive "grand bargain" on taxes and spending, Ryan has spoken more recently of a more modest "downpayment" toward reducing the $16.7 trillion federal debt.
The Congressional Budget Office says an additional $2trillion in 10-year savings is needed to stabilise the federal debt as a percentage of US economic output over the long term.
