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Shutdown: Hundreds of Thousands will Go without Pay

Category: News & Politics Published on Tuesday, 01 October 2013 04:46 Hits: 35
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(Daily Mail By DAVID MARTOSKO) -- The federal government shut down for the first time in 17 years last night. Lawmakers in the Democrat-controlled Senate and Republican-controlled Congress failed to pass a budget allowing for the federal government to continue to be funded as it headed into the new fiscal year at midnight. Late-night negotiations ended in deadlock after the Senate Democrats refused to consider any version of the budget that included changes to President Obama's signature health care law. This lack of compromise means that nearly a million federal workers will go on unpaid leave until the two legislative bodies come to an agreement. As the zero-hour drew closer on Monday, with other avenues exhausted, the White House's Office of Management and Budget told federal agencies that they 'should now execute plans for an orderly shutdown due to the absence of appropriations.'

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House Republican leaders on the Rules Committee had discussed the procedures for both parties to appoint 'conferees' negotiating representatives for a joint House-Senate conference committee empowered to hash out a compromise of the budget battle that has consumed Washington for days. The House GOP scrambled all day to avoid being the party without a chair when the shutdown music stops and the federal government moves to a new fiscal year without money to spend. Republicans have been insisting that a Continuing Resolution funding the federal government a 'CR,' in Capitol Hill-speak must include language defunding, delaying or otherwise changing the Affordable Care Act,

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President Obama's signature health care legislation. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid had said hours earlier that House GOP members had 'lost their minds.' That barb followed the House's decision to send its third such budget proposal to the Senate one that everyone in Washington understood would be dead on arrival. 'They keep trying to do the same thing over and over again,' Reid said on the Senate floor. 'The Senate will vote it down and the House Republicans will be in the same pickle theyre in now, but even with less time before the government shuts down.' But Reid also said on the floor earlier in the day that he would welcome a conference committee. He qualified that after 11:00 p.m., saying that only a continuing resolution a 'CR,' in Capitol Hill-speak free from Obamacare politics would pass muster. 'We will not go to conference until we get a "clean" CR,' he said. Debate in the House continued long after the clock struck twelve, with Democrats demanding an up-or-down vote on the Senate's version. The Senate, meanwhile, recessed until 9:30 a.m. Reid said Democrats expect to see the final funding bill from the house then, along with the formal request for a conference. He also said neither has a chance of being debated or voted on. 'When we receive that message from the House ... Ill make a motion to table it,' he said. The House passed that measure by a 228-199 vote around 1:00 a.m., officially 'insisting' that its Obamacare-related amendments should be adopted in the Senate, and requesting the conference committee. The real death-knell for House GOP efforts, however, came at 11:45 p.m. when New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, the top Democrat on the rules committee, said she wouldn't support such a conference. Conference committees, she said, should be reserved for ironing out minor differences in competing versions of legislation that both the House and Senate had already passed. And 'it's too late now,' Slaughter added, looking at the clock in the House chamber.

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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor tweeted before 11:00 p.m. that the GOP's final attempt at a resolution would be 'a motion insisting on our last amendment and request a conference with the Senate.'

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That amendment came hours earlier, as the GOP-led House passed its third failed attempt at a stopgap budget resolution. Their legislative language sought to delay for a year the Obamacare law's so-called 'individual mandate' that forces Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. Earlier in the day, Republicans had also sought to close a loophole that subsidizes 75 per cent of the resulting costs for members of Congress, their staffers, and White House aides, and to repeal an unpopular medical device tax. Twelve Republicans defected from their party in the 228201 vote, including a handful of moderates who have grown weary of the budget squabbles and some conservatives who don't believe the House GOP's position is strict enough. As Washington-watchers had seen twice already, the Senate quickly 'tabled' disregarded the proposition on a 56-44 party-line tally, leaving a few hours for the House GOP to start the dance all over again before the clock strikes twelve. House Republicans' strategy has been to make Senate Democrats look like an intransigent 'party of "no," forcing them to either act or face at least part of the blame for the first government shutdown since the 1995-1996 fiscal year. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican seen as a moderate foil to fire-breathing tea partiers like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, said Monday evening after the Senate's third consecutive dismissal of a House proposal that 'Americans don't want a government shutdown and they don't want Obamacare. But Senate Democrats have once again blocked a House-passed bill to keep the government open while protecting Americans from the consequences of Obamacare.' 'Unfortunately,' he added, 'Senate Democrats have made it perfectly clear that theyd rather shut down the federal government than accept even the most reasonable changes to Obamacare. Its past time that Democrat leaders listen to the American people and act.' Cruz, who spearheaded a marathon quasi-filibuster last week on the Senate floor marked with absolutist pitches for 'no compromise,' seemed to soften that stance Monday afternoon by hoping out loud for Senate approval of a watered-down GOP proposal from the House. 'If the House of Representatives acts tonight,' he said, 'I believe this Senate should come back immediately and pass ... whatever the House passes. I don't know what it will be, but it will be yet another good faith effort to keep the government running and to address the train wreck of a law that is Obamacare.' President Barack Obama castigated the Republicans on Monday afternoon, saying they aimed to 'extract a ransom' from the White House as a condition of continuing to fund his administration past midnight, when the federal government's fiscal year ends. Maintaining their leverage by insisting on changes to the Obamacare law as a condition of writing a new series of checks, he said 'would throw a wrench into the gears of our economy.' The federal government is America's largest employer,' Obama reminded reporters at the White House, cataloging

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http://whatsupic.com/news-politics-usa/3313-shutdown-hundreds-of-thousands-will-go-without-pay.html
the categories of civil servants whose income he said would be threatened by a government shutdown if Republicans in the House of Representatives don't 'pass a budget and pay America's bills.' Social Security and Medicare payments, he conceded, would continue, and the Postal Service would still deliver the mail. Government workers involved with national security, public safety, air-traffic control, prisons and border control, though would find their daily lives affected. Obama said 'their paychecks will be delayed.' Office buildings would close, he said, and services for seniors, veterans, women and children 'would be hamstrung.' Obama said military servicemen and women wouldn't be affected, a change from earlier in the day. That's because House Republicans passed a standalone bill funding Pentagon salaries regardless of whether or not other government agencies shut down at midnight. And in contrast with a series of other unqualified denials, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declined to block the legislation. Senators passed it by unanimous consent, in a move that didn't require a roll call vote. Obama signed it into law at about 10:00 p.m. 'They weren't going to stand in the way of soldiers' paychecks,' a senior aide to a Republican senator told MailOnline, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'Harry Reid wasn't about to commit political suicide today.' As the president took the podium, the White House's Office of Management and Budget issued a statement saying that '[b]y including extraneous measures that have no place in a government funding bill and that the President and Senate already made clear are unacceptable, House Republicans are pushing the Government toward shutdown.' If a GOP-amended budget reached the president's desk, OMB said, 'he would veto the bill.' 'It does not have to happen,' Obama scolded. 'All of this is entirely preventable if the House chooses to do what the Senate has already done, and that's the simple act of funding our government without making extraneous and controversial demands in the process.' 'One faction of one party in one house of Congress in one branch of government doesn't get to shut down the entire government just to re-fight the results of the election.' he said.

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He saved special scorn for the right wing of the GOP,

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whose tea party House caucus has held moderates in line by refusing to back what Senate Democrats have called a 'clean' spending resolution one that doesn't involve changes to the Affordable Care Act, Obama's signature health insurance overhaul law. The federal government has shut down 17 times since the end of the Gerald Ford presidency many of them when Democrats in Congress strong-armed Republican President Ronald Reagan but the 24-hour news cycle and online social media have made this year's budget brinksmanship especially toxic. Club For Growth, an influential conservative political group, immediately renewed its call for House members to support Republicans' plan instead. After several successive drafts interrupted by a 2:30 p.m. rejection from the Senate, the GOP's proposal sought a one-year delay in the Obamacare law's 'individual mandate' to buy health insurance, and a measure forcing members of Congress and their staffs to forgo insurance subsidies that ordinary taxpayers won't receive. Earlier in the day, Republicans dispensed with plans to demand a one-year implementation delay in the entire Obamacare law, along with the repeal of a new 2.3 per cent medical device tax. Senate Democrats said Monday afternoon that they wouldn't support that tax repeal, although a similar measure won the backing of 79 out of 100 senators earlier this year. Tea party partisans on the Republican Party's right wing had said since before the Obamacare law passed Supreme Court muster that it will have unintended negative consequences on the economy, and that it's an unconstitutional attempt to force Americans to buy a service health insurance that they may not want. Jenny Beth Martin, National Coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, said Monday in an emphatic statement that members of Congress should 'do your duty and protect the American public from this catastrophic law! ... Obamacare is not ready! Big labor, big government, and big business all know this and have already asked for exemption from this disaster.' 'You are the duly elected Representatives let the Senate know that a delay of the entire law is absolutely necessary, and fair.' Obama also assured Americans on Monday that no matter what happens, a government shutdown won't affect the planned Oct. 1 rollout of Obamacare's state-level health insurance exchanges. 'You can't shut it down,' he said, claiming that the law is 'already providing benefits to millions of Americans.' 'You don't get to extract a ransom just for doing your job.' Senate Democrats have maintained that their Republican counterparts in the House are radicals, bent on forcing the White House into a needless surrender on a health insurance law that has been passed on party-line votes and approved by the Supreme Court. 'We have just tabled the radical bill that the House sent over to us. It was deliberately designed to be politically provocative,' Maryland Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski said in a statement. 'Continuing Resolutions have always been about disputes over money. They were not about

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http://whatsupic.com/news-politics-usa/3313-shutdown-hundreds-of-thousands-will-go-without-pay.html
political, ideological viewpoints over past legislation.' But most House Republicans stuck to their guns, even as some news reports depicted a GOP in turmoil with a group of moderates encouraging conservatives to give up their fight. 'Senate Democrats have a clear choice: Protect special treatment for themselves and the politically connected, or shut down the government,' Texas Republican Rep. Kevin Brady said. 'I hope they put Americas middle class ahead of their own privileged class. 'Obamacare isnt ready for families, patients and workers,' he claimed. 'Why dont they get the same one-year waiver others have gotten? I hope the Senate doesnt protect the politically connected and needlessly shut down the government.' Brady's statement said the White House has acknowledged a host of implementation problems with the Affordable Care Act which could be fixed given a year-long delay. As he has in recent weeks, Obama emphasized the value of low-cost health insurance plans, without noting that those policies' high deductibles can make a patient's out-ofpocket medical costs dwarf the policy's official price tag. The president said Republicans were 'sacrific[ing] the health care of millions of Americans' by refusing to endorse the plan advanced by Senate Democrats. He also hinted at his preference for a long-term solution, instead of stopgap measures that some Republicans have suggested publicly. 'Does anybody truly believe we won't have this fight again in a few more months?' Obama asked. 'Even at Christmas?'

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