According to sources, the Senate deal under discussion would reopen the government, funding it until January 15. It would also raise the debt limit until February 7 to avert a possible default on U.S. debt obligations for the first time.
It also would set up budget negotiations between the House and Senate for a long-term spending plan, and would include a provision to strengthen verification measures for people seeking government subsidies under Obama's signature health care reforms.
If the Senate passes an
agreement, House Speaker John Boehner will probably face the decision of
whether to allow a vote that he knows can only pass with virtually all
Democrats and only a few of his fellow Republicans supporting it.
That would break a
Republican tradition known as the Hastert rule. The informal tenet,
named after former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, says that the House
speaker does not introduce legislation unless a majority of Republicans
say they will vote for it first.
On Tuesday, Obama called
for House Republicans to "do what's right" by reopening government and
ensuring the United States can pay its bills. "We don't have a lot of
time," he said.
But he acknowledged Boehner's difficulty in getting his fellow House Republicans on the same page.
"Negotiating with me
isn't necessarily good for the extreme faction in his caucus," Obama
said, referring to the tea party and its conservative allies. "It
weakens him, so there have been repeated situations where we have
agreements. Then he goes back, and it turns out that he can't control
his caucus."
***
Parts of the federal government officially shut down at 12:01 Tuesday morning after Congress played hot potato with a spending bill for several hours but failed to come to an agreement to fully fund normal operations.
By midday Monday, the congressional debate had fallen into a predictable pattern and a shutdown seemed inevitable. The House would pass a version of the spending bill that delayed or chipped away at the Affordable Care Act. The Senate would proceed to strip the bill of its amendments, pass it, and send it back to the House, and the cycle would start again.
Late Monday night, in a last ditch effort to end the ping-ponging between the House and Senate, House Republicans offered to setup a bipartisan conference committee to negotiate the differences between the House and Senate bills. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., rejected that proposal outright, repeating his mantra that the Senate isn't interested in passing anything but a "clean" spending bill and that they won't be forced to negotiate "with a gun to our head." Senate Democrats also pointed out that they had been calling for a bipartisan conference for months, a request that had been brushed off by House Republicans.
Earlier Monday, President Obama placed calls to Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Monday afternoon, but did not seem to be looking for a negotiating partner. He reiterated his preference for a "clean" spending bill free of any amendments and said he would continue to oppose any attempts to defund or delay the healthcare law, a White House official said.
In the morning, an estimated 800,000 of the 2.1 million federal workers who are deemed nonessential for the operations of the government will be sent home after they have shut down their work. Only employees who are necessary to ensure national security and protect Americans' lives and property will be allowed to work, albeit without pay, along with a few other types of workers.
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