President Barack Obama says he doesn’t foresee a repeat of the political showdown over increasing the nation’s borrowing authority.

He also says that he believes the nation would be better off if the threat of default, in his words, “is not there on a perpetual basis.”

Obama spoke at the annual meeting of the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council.

Obama and Republican lawmakers clashed in September and October over raising the government debt ceiling, with some Republicans initially insisting on unraveling the 3-year-old health care law. A dispute over spending also caused a 16-day government shutdown.

Obama says the system is set up, quote, “like a loaded gun.”

But he says he’d like to believe that Republicans now recognize that the threat of default was not a good strategy.

(AP)