"WASHINGTON — Facing the prospect of the first shutdown of the federal government in 17 years, House Republicans chose a hard line on Saturday with a proposal to delay President Obama’s health care law for one year and permanently repeal a tax on medical devices that helps pay for the law. The House is expected to vote late Saturday on the legislation, which would keep the government operating past 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday. But the Senate, controlled by Democrats, has said it will not accept changes to the health care law as a condition for keeping the government open, all but ensuring that much of the government will shut down unless lawmakers can agree on a short-term spending bill while negotiations continue. Indeed, the House Republican package would also ensure that military personnel continue to be paid in the event of a government shutdown, an acknowledgement that a shutdown was likely. “The American people don’t want a government shutdown, and they don’t want Obamacare,” House Republican leaders said in a joint statement. “We will do our job and send this bill over, and then it’s up to the Senate to pass it and stop a government shutdown.” Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, showed a flare of temper when asked what would happen when the Senate rejected the House’s offer. “How dare you presume a failure?” he asked. “We continue to believe there’s an opportunity for sensible compromise, and I will not accept from anybody the assumption of failure.” Even so, House Republicans on Saturday appeared ready to let the government shut down, at least for “a very brief” time, said Representative Doug Lambron, Republican of Colorado. Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, shrugged off the drama. “The federal government has shut down 17 times before, sometimes when the Democrats were in control, sometimes with divided government,” she said. “What are we doing on our side of the aisle? We’re fighting for the American people.” On Friday, the Senate passed a stopgap bill to keep the government running through Nov. 15 without the health care provisions. Then Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, sent the Senate home for the weekend, leaving little time for that chamber to vote on any House legislation that could avoid a shutdown before the fiscal year ends. In his weekly address on Saturday, Mr. Obama said: “Republicans in the House have been more concerned with appeasing an extreme faction of their party than working to pass a budget that creates new jobs or strengthens the middle class. And in the next couple days, these Republicans will have to decide whether to join the Senate and keep the government open, or create a crisis that will hurt people for the sole purpose of advancing their ideological agenda. The American people have worked too hard to recover from crisis to see extremists in their Congress cause another one.” Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, the House Republican Conference chairwoman, used the weekly Republican address to shift the debate to an even more crucial deadline, Oct. 17, when Congress must raise the government’s statutory borrowing limit or precipitate a potentially catastrophic debt default. “The president is now demanding that we increase the debt limit without engaging in any kind of bipartisan discussions about addressing our spending problem,” she said. “He wants to take the easy way out — exactly the kind of foolishness that got us here in the first place.” Individuals can enroll in insurance plans under the new health care law beginning on Tuesday."
Posted on: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 19:48:23 +0000
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