Obama hopes Congress will just stay out of the way What's different this time - what will make this series of speeches over the next two months more politically convincing than those he delivered during the "recovery summer" and "Main Street" jobs tour - is the relatively modest request at the heart of Obama's list of issues and ideas. More than adopting his activist vision of government, Obama wants Congress, specifically a recalcitrant group of House Republicans, to get out of the way. There is a lot Obama wants from Congress, little of which is likely achievable in the current political circumstances. For Obama, looking to put his second term on a more focused course, preserving the status quo might be a victory in itself. "Washington hasn't just ignored the problem," Obama told an audience of a few hundred people gathered at a dockside cruise terminal here. It's made things worse. The impending budget debate and expiration of the borrowing limit in several months has - again - potentially set the conditions for a politically induced economic setback similar to the one that followed the 2011 debt-ceiling fight. As deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday, a government shutdown would "suck the momentum" from the still-fragile economic recovery. But Obama is making threats of his own that could complicate the simple goal of keeping the government running. In his speeches this week, Obama has threatened to reject spending bills that do not meet his goal of helping the middle class. Here in Jacksonville, where he highlighted a pair of projects whose permitting he helped expedite through executive order, Obama condemned House Republicans for "pushing bills that would cut education, cut science, cut research." He pledged to oppose those efforts. The criticism echoed the challenge he made to Republicans the previous day, when he called for their ideas and for an economic plan that reaches beyond spending cuts and a repeal of his health-care act. "Shutting down the government just because I'm for keeping it open - that's not an economic plan," Obama said. Refusing to pay bills you've already racked up isn't an economic plan. That's just being a deadbeat. His position, as well as the partisan edge he has brought to his remarks, will likely make him few new friends among House Republicans. Ahead of the president's speaking tour, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) warned of an impending "Obama-induced government shutdown." "Under the president's leadership our country has fallen into the "new normal" of slow growth, high unemployment, and stagnant wages - and I think it's unacceptable," Boehner said Thursday on the House floor. But his speech turned out to be all sizzle and no steak. That's assuming that there is any sizzle left after you've reheated this thing so many times.