"I never refused to go to a meeting that President Obama called, a bipartisan meeting. It never occurred to me that I could just say ... 'I'm not showing up.'

That strikes me as a lack of seriousness about the matter before us, which is the funding of the federal government of the United States for the rest of this fiscal year.

So you'll have to ask them why they think it's appropriate to refuse to meet with the president of the United States over something as significant as how we're going to fund the troops and all the other needs that are addressed by the spending decisions we make every year."