WASHINGTON — A flurry of last-minute moves by the House, Senate and
White House late Monday failed to break a bitter budget standoff over
President Obama’s health care law, setting in motion the first
government shutdown in nearly two decades.
The impasse meant that 800,000 federal workers were to be furloughed and
more than a million others would be asked to work without pay. The
Office of Management and Budget issued orders shortly before the
midnight deadline that “agencies should now execute plans for an orderly
shutdown due to the absence of appropriations” because Congress had
failed to act to keep the federal government financed.
After a series of rapid-fire back and forth legislative maneuvers, the
House and Senate ended the day with no resolution, and the Senate halted
business until later Tuesday while the House took steps to open talks.
But Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, dismissed as game-playing
the House proposal to begin conference committee negotiations.
“We will not go to conference with a gun to our heads,” he said,
demanding that the House accept the Senate’s six-week stopgap spending
bill, which has no policy prescriptions, before negotiations begin.
The Obama administration and the Republican-controlled House had come
close to failing to finance the government in the past but had always
reached a last-minute agreement to head off a disruption in government
services.
In the hours leading up to the deadline, House Republican leaders won approval, in a vote of 228 to 201,
of a new plan to tie further government spending to a one-year delay in
a requirement that individuals buy health insurance. The House proposal
would deny federal subsidies to members of Congress, Capitol Hill
staff, executive branch political appointees, White House staff, and the
president and vice president, who would be forced to buy their health
coverage on the Affordable Care Act’s new insurance exchanges.
But 57 minutes later, and with almost no debate, the Senate killed the
House health care provisions and sent the stopgap spending bill right
back, free of policy prescriptions. Earlier in the day, the Senate had
taken less than 25 minutes to convene and dispose of a weekend budget
proposal by the House Republicans.
“They’ve lost their minds,” Mr. Reid said, before disposing of the House
bill. “They keep trying to do the same thing over and over again.”
The federal government was then left essentially to run out of money at
midnight, the end of the fiscal year, although the president signed a
measure late Monday that would allow members of the military to continue
to be paid.
“You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job,” Mr. Obama said
in the White House briefing room as the clock ticked to midnight.
Mr. Obama called House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, but they spoke
for less than 10 minutes, without any sign of progress.
“I talked to the president tonight,” the speaker said on the House
floor. He summed up Mr. Obama’s remarks as: “I’m not going to negotiate.
I’m not going to negotiate.”
The House’s most ardent conservatives were resigned to seeing through
their war on the health care law to its inevitable conclusion, a
shutdown that could test voters’ patience with Republican brinkmanship.
Cracks in the party were opening into fissures of frustration.
“You have this group that keeps saying somehow if you’re not with them,
you’re for Obamacare,” said Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of
California. “If you’re not with exactly their plan, exactly what they
want to do, then you’re somehow for Obamacare, and it’s just getting a
little old.”
“It’s moronic to shut down the government over this,” he continued.
It was far from certain that Republicans could remain unified on their
insistence on health care concessions if a shutdown lasted for some
time. Asked whether Republicans could hold together through the end of
the week, Representative Phil Gingrey of Georgia, one of the more
conservative members, answered: “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Earlier Monday, the Senate voted 54 to 46 along party lines to kill the
previous House plan immediately after ending a weekend break. Senators
then sent the House a bill to finance the government through Nov. 15
without policy prescriptions.
But House leaders would have none of it, again demanding a significant
hit to the health law as a price for keeping the government open.
Mr. Reid laid into Mr. Boehner and put the blame for a shutdown solely
on his shoulders. “Our negotiation is over with,” he said.
“You know with a bully you cannot let them slap you around, because they
slap you around today, they slap you five or six times tomorrow,” Mr.
Reid, a former boxer, continued. “We are not going to be bullied.”
In addition to criticizing Mr. Boehner, Mr. Reid excoriated what he
called the “banana Republican mind-set” of the House. He called on the
speaker to put the Senate bill up for a vote, which would almost
certainly pass in the House because of overwhelming Democratic support
and backing from moderate Republicans.
In one of their final moves, House Republicans attached language to a
government funding bill that would delay the mandate that individuals
obtain health insurance and would force members of Congress, their
staffs and White House staff members to buy their health insurance on
the new exchanges without any government subsidies.
Conservative activists have portrayed the language as ensuring that
Congress and the White House would be held to the same strictures that
apply to ordinary Americans under the health care law. In fact, the
language would put poorly paid junior staff members at a disadvantage.
Most people buying coverage on the exchanges will receive subsidies
through generous tax credits. Most Americans will still get their
insurance from their employers, who will continue to receive a tax
deduction for the cost of that care. Under the House language, lawmakers
and their staffs, executive branch political appointees, the White
House staff, and the president and vice president would have to pay the
entire cost of health insurance out of pocket.
Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said junior staff
members were “being used as a sacrifice” for a political gambit, driven
by Republican hard-liners in the Senate like Ted Cruz of Texas, that
will go nowhere.
“They locked themselves into this situation, the dead end that Ted Cruz created,” Mr. King said.
The budget confrontation — which threatened to close federal offices and
facilities, idling thousands of workers around the country — stemmed
from an unusual push by Republicans to undo a law that has been on the
books for three years, through a presidential election, and that the
Supreme Court largely upheld in 2012. A major part of the law is set to
take effect Tuesday: the opening of insurance exchanges, where people
without insurance will be able to obtain coverage.
Republicans argue that the administration has itself delayed elements of
the law. They say it should be postponed for at least a year.
Democrats say Republicans are being driven by the most extreme elements
of their party to use the federal budget to extract concessions on
health care that they could not win through the traditional legislative
process. “The scary thing about the period we’re in right now is there
is no clear end,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of
Maryland.
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