Senate Rejects House Continuing Resolution
To the surprise of nobody, the Senate has rejected the Continuing Resolution that the House passed on Saturday night on a strict party-line vote:
Congress took another step toward a government shutdown Monday as the Senate voted 54-46 to strip language from a House funding bill that delayed ObamaCare by a year.
Senate Democrats called on House Republicans to pass a clean government funding resolution and warned the GOP would take the brunt of the public backlash if government services become severely curtailed.
Democrats also eliminated language allowing employers to opt out of providing insurance coverage of contraception if doing so violates their moral or religious principles.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) needed only a simple majority vote to cut the House language delaying ObamaCare and repealing the medical device tax because the amended stopgap came from across the Capitol as a message to the Senate. Monday’s vote was strictly on party lines.
The afternoon vote leaves Congress where it was at the start of the weekend with Senate Democrats insisting on passage of a stopgap free of policy riders and House Republicans demanding action on the Affordable Care Act.
The government will shut down at midnight unless negotiators reach a compromise.
As the Senate was voting, the House GOP Caucus was holding a members-only meeting, and the details leaking out make it seem unlikely that we’ll see a resolution of this today:
As @NRO has been reporting, Vitter amdt is going to be the next House GOP CR volley, tied to indv mandate delay
— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) September 30, 2013
Sources inside mtg email me, say ldrshp is trying to woo right to Vitter / ind mandate play, still tlkng abt forcing Reid's hand
— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) September 30, 2013
Meanwhile, there are reports that Mitch McConnell has been floating the idea of a one-week status quo CR that would give the branches more time to talk. However, it’s unclear that Boehner could get the rebellious wing of his caucus to go along with that. Additionally, Harry Reid just made it clear at a post-vote press conference that such an idea is not acceptable to him.
So, with little more than nine hours left before the deadline it’s clear that nothing has changed and that the House seems intent on continuing with its quixotic efforts to chip away at the PPACA as part of the budget process.
A one-week CR so there’s more time to negotiate a six-week CR? Yeah, no.
And for the dead-ender Repubs who still believe ‘MURICA! backs them, reality says otherwise:
Breaking it down further, Obama’s net approval on the issue is minus-9 while the Congressional Dems come in at minus-22.
Congressional Republicans? Minus-37.
Why don’t we just go with 1-day CRs and then we can have this fight on whether to keep the government running on a daily basis?
At this rate, it won’t be long before President Obama is well-advised to govern by Executive Order, especially with respect to the impending Debt Limit fiasco and a very possible second downgrade in the credit rating of American federal securities.
We need a pool… How long before Boehner offers up the clean bill?
“You know what else?” Pelosi said. “They’re fakers”
So now Republicans are “fake extreme hostage taking terrorists” ?