The government shutdown will lurch into a second week after another fruitless day on Capitol Hill.
A rare Saturday session was dominated by now-familiar shutdown messaging from Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate, with each side trying blame the other for keeping the government shuttered. Even House-passed legislation that would pay federal workers prompted an angry reaction from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
More than a dozen lawmakers will appear on the Sunday shows to keep making their rhetorical case about which side is being unreasonable in the congressional stalemate.
House GOP leaders will do something Sunday they haven™t done in a couple weeks – send their members home. The Senate will also take a day-long breather from the partisan rancor of the Capitol.
Boehner and his top lieutenants wrestled with whether they should let members leave town, fearing that if they did, they™d lose control of them and party unity would crumble. The Senate too did not want to take a day off during a shutdown while the House was in session, fearing poor optics.
But rank-and-file lawmakers are exhausted from a two-week, high-tension fight and leadership decided to send them home for at least a day. Neither chamber is expected to vote until Monday, all but guaranteeing a shutdown of at least a week. The government closed up last Tuesday at midnight.
For the fifth straight day on Saturday, House leaders urged the Senate to pick up their piecemeal bills funding pieces of government. Meanwhile a parade of mostly Democratic senators took to the floor for hours, calling on House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to pass a six-week government funding bill that doesn™t touch Obamacare.
House lawmakers of both parties at least agreed on one thing during the unusual weekend work session, passing a bill, 407-0, to give furloughed federal workers back pay once the shutdown is over. That legislation is also endorsed by the White House.
After House passage, Reid (D-Nev.) ripped the the House GOP for offering a œpaid vacation” for federal workers while also refusing to reopen the government. The Senate may yet take up the House bill, but the upper chamber did not do so on Sunday. Senators from Maryland and Virginia – states with high numbers of federal workers – have introduced a bill in the Senate to do the same.
œGreat news House passed our bill to guarantee back pay for fed workers. Ready to pass in Senate,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said on Twitter.
More than 800,000 federal workers have been furloughed due to the shutdown that began Tuesday.
Another non-binding resolution from the House, considered under a parliamentary procedure requiring a two-thirds majority to pass, will allow military chaplains to continue to provide religious services during the shutdown. All House lawmakers except Rep. Bill Enyart (D-Ill.) voted in favor of the legislation.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) tried to track down Enyart or his aides to see why he voted against the resolution, according to leadership aides, but the vote ended and he was still registered as a œno” vote. Enyart explained in a statement that he would not vote œfor any more feel-good bills until we can vote on a clean continuing resolution that reopens the government.”
Later Saturday morning, House leadership in both parties held dueling press conferences on the government shutdown, ramping up the blame game but leaving Congress no closer to a resolution.
”I think that there is a majority of senators who support these bills to ease the pain on the American people while we continue to wait for the president to join us in these discussions to work out these differences,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters.
Meanwhile, House Democratic leadership released a letter signed by 195 House Democratic representatives and five non-voting delegates, urging Republican leaders to allow a vote on a so-called œclean” funding resolution to fund the government. Only Democratic Reps. John Barrow of Georgia, Jim Cooper of Tennessee, Ron Kind of Wisconsin, Jim Matheson of Utah and Mike McIntyre of North Carolina did not sign the letter.
The most significant action in the Senate on Saturday was an impassioned speech by Reid to open the Senate, mostly notable for its length of nearly 30 minutes rather than its substance. Reid urged House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) for the umpteenth time to take up the Senate™s œclean” spending bill that would reopen the government and lambasting the House™s piecemeal bills.
œNo matter how many bites the Republicans take at the apple, there is only one bill that makes sure everything is met: The Senate bill to reopen the government,” Reid said. œWe™ve been waiting a week, but the speaker could end this government shutdown before they go home for Sunday.”
In his weekly radio address, Obama read aloud letters written by residents from Alabama to North Dakota who can™t access vital government services. Obama called on Congress to pass a clean funding bill to re-open the government, and he indicated once again that he will not give in to Republican demands to dismantle or tweak his signature health care law.
œTake that vote. Stop this farce. End this shutdown now,” Obama said. œThe American people don™t get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their job. Neither does Congress. They don™t get to hold our democracy or our economy hostage over a settled law.”
Democrats and Republicans remain far apart from an agreement to fund federal operations. House Republicans are now focused on piecemeal bills to fund different parts of the government, such as the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Congressional Democrats and the White House are insisting on a bill that funds the entire government without any changes to Obamacare.
As the Oct. 17 deadline for boosting the nation™s debt limit fast approaches – and the possibility of a debt default begins to loom larger for U.S. and global financial markets – the partisan struggles over government funding and the national debt have begun to merge.
Boehner and the House GOP leadership, with input from Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), are beginning to coalesce around a scaled-down version of the œgrand bargain” package floated over the last few years.
In return for passing a government-funding bill and debt-limit boost through next year, Republicans will seek changes to entitlement reform and lay out the framework for a tax-reform package. Proposals such as means testing for Medicare recipients, or enactment of œchained CPI” – a revised formula for calculating federal benefit payments – would be included in the package as well. Republicans would seek to repeal the medical device tax or abolish the Independent Payment Advisory Board – created under the Affordable Care Act – or make other changes to Obama™s signature health-care program.
The White House and Democratic congressional leaders, though, are already signaling they™re not interested in any such deal. They want Republicans to agree to œclean” government and debt limit bills first, and then talks over a broader fiscal and budget package can take place. POLITICO
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