Republicans Couple Anti-Obamacare Legislation with Government Shutdown Strategy

Congress continues to squabble on first day of a government shutdown

October 1, 2013

AP - On the morning of the first federal government shutdown in 17 years, the political brinkmanship reached a stalemate when the Senate rejected a House request for a conference committee to take up a proposal to fund the government through Dec. 15 and delay a key part of the Affordable Care Act.

The Democrat-controlled Senate on Tuesday voted to table the House bill passed overnight that proposed the committee. The House bill also included language that would prohibit congressional staff members from receiving subsidies for their health care plans and delay Obamacare’s individual mandate to buy health insurance for one year.

By transitioning to a conference committee, the House and Senate would each appoint members to work out a deal to fund the government and end the shutdown. But appointing a committee would take the talks from public view to closed-door negotiating rooms where lawmakers and staffers could hash out their differences in private.

The Senate's refusal to accept the Republican proposal is the latest indication that the government shutdown, which began at midnight Tuesday, won't end immediately. This is the first shutdown since federal operations closed down under former President Bill Clinton in 1996

Before turning down the latest House offer Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that the upper chamber would not accept conference talks until the House approves a measure to fund the government for six weeks that includes no extra amendments such as the ones aimed at crippling the federal health care law. Until they pass a “clean” bill, he said, negotiations would stall.

"We will not go to conference with a gun to our head,” Reid said on the Senate floor.

The result of a shutdown came after House Republicans repeatedly refused to pass a bill to set federal spending levels unless the federal health care law was defunded or delayed. Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama repeatedly said they would not accept any spending bill that tampers with the law.

Last week, the House passed a bill to completely defund the health law. When the Senate rejected it, the House passed another version that abolished a tax on medical devices and delayed the law for a year. When the Senate rejected that, House Republicans passed another bill that delayed the individual mandate and revoked health insurance subsidies for congressional staffers. After the Senate said no to that, the clock ran out and the government shut down. That’s when the House asked for private negotiations — surprise, the Senate turned that down — and that’s where the parties stand now.

Meanwhile, Obama, who has called on Congress to pass a clean bill to fund the government, called the shutdown “completely preventable.”

"This shutdown was completely preventable,” Obama wrote in a letter to federal employees. “It should not have happened."

Obama is scheduled to make a statement in the Rose Garden at 12:25 p.m. ET about the opening Tuesday of Obamacare insurance exchanges and about the government shutdown.

The back-and-forth between the parties will continue throughout the day, as House Republicans recalibrate their strategy and Senate lawmakers huddle for partisan meetings this afternoon.

Unless they can find a compromise, the government will remain shut down until further notice.

The Republican strategy of coupling anti-Obamacare legislation with the threat of a government shutdown is unpopular, according to a national Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday. American voters oppose the GOP's tactic by a margin of 72-22 percent, according to the poll.