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  1. #1
    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    House delays Obamacare as shutdown nears

    Politico
    By JOHN BRESNAHAN and JAKE SHERMAN | 9/28/13
    Updated: 9/29/13 12:41 AM EDT

    “Today’s vote by House Republicans is pointless,” Reid said in a statement. “As I have said repeatedly, the Senate will reject any Republican attempt to force changes to the Affordable Care Act through a mandatory government funding bill or the debt ceiling. Furthermore, President Obama has stated that he would veto such measures if they ever reached his desk.”
    House delays Obamacare as shutdown nears

    House Republicans forced through a short-term government funding bill that delays Obamacare and permanently repeals a tax on medical devices, setting up their most dramatic face-off ever with President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats.

    The vote to delay Obamacare was 231-192, with two Republicans voting against the bill, while two Democrats supported it. The Republicans opposed to the bill were New York Reps. Chris Gibson and Richard Hanna, and the Democrats who supported the measure were North Carolina Rep. Mike McInytre and Utah Rep. Jim Matheson.

    The move represents a complete about-face by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the House Republican leadership. They wanted to shift the focus of health care and budgetary squabbles onto the debt ceiling fight, but conservative Republicans honed in on the government funding battle.

    This strategy — forced upon Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) by the conservative rank-and-file — dramatically increased the chances of a government shutdown come Oct. 1.

    Boehner didn’t speak on the House floor during the debate before the amendments passed.

    “The House has again passed a plan that reflects the American people’s desire to keep the government running and stop the president’s health care law,” Boehner said in a post-vote statement. Repealing the medical device tax will save jobs and delaying the president’s health care law for all Americans is only fair given the exemptions the White House has granted to big businesses and insurance companies.”

    He added: “Now that the House has again acted, it’s up to the Senate to pass this bill without delay to stop a government shutdown.”

    The House also passed a bill to fund U.S. troops in case of a shutdown. The chamber further adopted a “conscience clause” that postpones until 2015 an Obamacare requirement that employers cover birth control as part of their health-insurance packages. Their funding resolution keeps government open until Dec. 15 at a level of $986 billion.

    Passage of the funding bill late Saturday night, following several hours of acrimonious debate the House, sets the stage for two days of political drama over whether the federal government will actually shut down on Oct. 1.

    Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have already warned that the GOP proposal is unacceptable. Reid may not even bring back the Senate into session until Monday afternoon — just hours before a shutdown would begin — to reject the GOP proposal.

    “Today’s vote by House Republicans is pointless,” Reid said in a statement. “As I have said repeatedly, the Senate will reject any Republican attempt to force changes to the Affordable Care Act through a mandatory government funding bill or the debt ceiling. Furthermore, President Obama has stated that he would veto such measures if they ever reached his desk.”

    On Friday, Senate Democrats passed a bill to fund the government until Nov. 15, but kept intact Obamacare.

    The two chambers are on a collision course, a standoff that could lead to the first government shutdown since 1996.

    This is just the first round of an entire fall filled with fiscal fights. In just days, Congress must figure out how to raise the debt ceiling — Congress must increase the national borrowing limit before Oct. 17. A discussion over government funding for the next fiscal year will also sprout up again before the new year.

    Many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle believe the ominous turns in the government-funding fight portend an even nastier battle over the debt ceiling, with repercussions that could shake U.S. and global financial markets.

    But for many Republicans, this is a watershed moment that’s been long in the making.

    Defunding, delaying and otherwise chipping away at Obamacare has been the centerpiece of the House Republican majority since it took control of the chamber in 2011. Obama has changed some portions of his signature legislative achievement, and he has taken unilateral action to delay the mandate that employers provide health insurance to their workers.

    In an ideal world that never materialized, Boehner tried to avoid this fight, and direct angst over Obamacare to the debt ceiling battle, where he thought Obama would want to cut a deal that would include replacing the sequester. The Ohio Republican first proposed using the debt ceiling vote as a backstop — something Republicans could look forward to if they didn’t get their way in the CR fight. But the rank-and-file rejected that strategy. Then, leadership sought to have a debt ceiling vote before the one on government funding. Rank-and-file Republicans rejected that as well, saying they wanted to see the ultimate resolution in the CR battle before committing to raising the debt ceiling.

    It’s a small group of conservatives that have tied the hands of Boehner, Cantor (R-Va.) and McCarthy (R-Calif.) — just enough Republicans to prevent the leadership from being able to exert its will.

    That explains the fits and starts of the past few weeks. Republicans have cycled through several fiscal strategies, all of them proving flawed in the eyes of the conservative base.

    http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.c...A-AC17003EF340
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  2. #2
    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    U.S. Shutdown Nears as House Votes to Delay Health Law

    New York Times

    By JONATHAN WEISMAN and JEREMY W. PETERS
    Published: September 28, 2013

    The House's votes, which came just past midnight Sunday, all but assured that large parts of the government would be shuttered as of 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday.

    WASHINGTON — The federal government on Sunday morning barreled toward its first shutdown in 17 years after the Republican-run House, choosing a hard line, voted to attach a one-year delay of President Obama’s health care law and a repeal of a tax to pay for it to legislation to keep the government running.

    The votes, just past midnight, followed an often-angry debate, with members shouting one another down on the House floor. Democrats insisted that Republicans refused to accept their losses in 2012, were putting contempt for the president over the good of the country and would bear responsibility for a shutdown. Republicans said they had the public on their side and were acting to protect Americans from a harmful and unpopular law that had already proved a failure.

    The House first voted 248-174 to repeal a tax on medical devices, then voted 231-192 to delay the law’s implementation by a year — just days before the uninsured begin enrolling in the law’s insurance exchanges. The delay included a provision favored by social conservatives that would allow employers and health care providers to opt out of mandatory contraception coverage.

    But before the House had even voted, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, declared the House bill dead. Senate Democrats are planning to table the Republican measures when they convene on Monday, leaving the House just hours to pass a stand-alone spending bill free of any measures that undermine the health care law.

    The House’s votes early Sunday all but assured that large parts of the government would be shuttered as of 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday. More than 800,000 federal workers deemed nonessential faced furloughs; millions more could be working without paychecks.

    “The American people don’t want a government shutdown, and they don’t want Obamacare,” House Republican leaders said in a 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.”

    A separate House Republican bill passed unanimously Sunday morning to ensure that military personnel continued to be paid in the event of a government shutdown, an acknowledgment that a shutdown is likely. En route to South Korea, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was unimpressed, excoriating his former Republican colleagues in Congress.

    “This is an astoundingly irresponsible way to govern,” Mr. Hagel said, adding that a fully functioning military went beyond its uniformed forces to its civilian personnel. “If this continues, we will have a country that is ungovernable.”

    Representative Darrell Issa, a powerful Republican committee chairman who is close to the leadership but has sided with those who want to gut the health care law, flashed anger when asked what would happen when the Senate rejected the House’s offer.

    “How dare you presume a failure?” he snapped. “We continue to believe there’s an opportunity for sensible compromise, and I will not accept from anybody the assumption of failure.”

    But Mr. Reid made it clear that failure was inevitable. “After weeks of futile political games from Republicans, we are still at Square 1,” he said. “We continue to be willing to debate these issues in a calm and rational atmosphere. But the American people will not be extorted by Tea Party anarchists.”

    The White House was just as blunt. “Any member of the Republican Party who votes for this bill is voting for a shutdown,” the press secretary, Jay Carney, said in a written statement. The White House also said that the president would veto the House bill if approved by the Senate.

    In fact, many House Republicans acknowledged that they expected the Senate to reject the House’s provisions, making a shutdown all but assured. House Republicans were warned repeatedly that Senate Democrats would not accept any changes to the health care law.

    Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio faced a critical decision this weekend: Accept a bill passed by the Senate on Friday to keep the government financed and the health care law intact and risk a conservative revolt that could threaten his speakership, or make one more effort to undermine the president’s signature domestic initiative and hope that a shutdown would not do serious political harm to his party.

    With no guarantee that Democrats would help him, he chose the shutdown option. The House’s unruly conservatives had more than enough votes to defeat a spending bill that would not do significant damage to the health care law, unless Democrats were willing to bail out the speaker. And Democrats showed little inclination to alleviate the Republicans’ intraparty warfare.

    “The federal government has shut down 17 times before, sometimes when the Democrats were in control, sometimes with divided government,” said Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina. “What are we doing on our side of the aisle? We’re fighting for the American people.”

    Veteran House Republicans say there is still one plausible way to avoid a shutdown. The Senate could take up the House spending bill, strip out the one-year health care delay and accept the 2.3-percent medical device tax repeal as a face-saving victory for Republicans. The tax, worth $30 billion over 10 years, has ardent opponents among Democrats as well. Its repeal would not prevent the law from going into effect. Consumers can begin signing up for insurance plans under the law beginning on Tuesday.

    Mr. Reid has already said he would not accept even that measure as a condition to keep the government operating. Special parliamentary language in the House measure provided for rapid action Monday in the Senate that would once again most likely leave House Republican leaders with the option of approving a spending bill without policy prescriptions. But there was little indication they would accept it.

    “By pandering to the Tea Party minority and trying to delay the benefits of health care reform for millions of seniors and families, House Republicans are now actively pushing for a completely unnecessary government shutdown,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the Democrat who leads the Budget Committee.

    As provocative as it was, the move by House Republicans was an expression of their most basic political goal since they took control in 2010: doing what they can to derail the biggest legislative achievement of Mr. Obama’s presidency.

    As a debate inside the party raged over whether it was politically wise to demand delay or defunding of the act, many Republicans argued that they should fight as hard as they could because that is what their constituents were expecting. “This is exactly what the public wants,” Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said.

    The mood in the Capitol on Saturday, at least among Republicans, was downright giddy. When Republican leaders presented their plan in a closed-door meeting on Saturday, cheers and chants of “Vote, vote, vote!” went up. As members left the meeting, many wore beaming grins.

    Representative John Culberson of Texas said that as he and his colleagues were clamoring for a vote, he shouted out his own encouragement. “I said, like 9/11, ‘Let’s roll!’ “ That the Senate would almost certainly reject the health care delay, he added, was not a concern. “Ulysses S. Grant used to say, ‘Boys, quit worrying about what Bobby Lee is doing. I want to know what we are doing.’ And that’s what the House is doing today, thank God.”

    After the shutdowns of 1995 and 1996, Republicans were roundly blamed. Their approval ratings plunged, and President Bill Clinton sailed to re-election. This time they say they have a strategy that will shield them from political fallout, especially with the bill to keep money flowing to members of the military.

    “If Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats would stop being so stubborn then no, of course the government won’t get shut down,” said Representative Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas.

    Republicans readily acknowledged that the difficulty is what is next. If the Senate sends back a bill, it will most likely not have a yearlong delay. Then Mr. Boehner must decide whether to put that measure on the floor, which would anger his conservative members.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us..._20130928&_r=0
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  3. #3
    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    “This is an astoundingly irresponsible way to govern,” Mr. Hagel said, adding that a fully functioning military went beyond its uniformed forces to its civilian personnel. “If this continues, we will have a country that is ungovernable.”
    -----------------------------------------------

    NEWSFLASH: The Legislative, Judicial, and Executive branches of the U.S. Government have been ungovernable by American Citizens for at least 20 years ..
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  4. #4
    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    House Republicans Target Contraception In Last-Minute Spending Bill

    House Republicans Target Contraception In Last-Minute Spending Bill

    Huffington Post
    Posted: 09/28/2013 9:35 pm EDT | Updated: 09/29/2013 12:28 am EDT

    WASHINGTON -- House Republicans included a so-called "conscience clause" in the government funding bill in a plan they approved early Sunday.

    The House voted 231-192 on a bill that would delay much of the 2010 health care overhaul for a year. It would also repeal a tax on medical devices that helps finance the health care law.

    The measure would allow employers and insurers to opt out of providing health care services that they find morally or religiously objectionable. The addition reignites the debate over a portion of the health care reform law that requires most insurers to cover women's preventative health care, including contraception. CNN reports that the provision would allow them to opt out of coverage for the next year.

    A House Republican leadership aide confirmed to HuffPost that the provision was added into the one-year delay of Obamacare during a House Rules Committee meeting on Saturday evening.

    Planned Parenthood Federation of America Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens called the move "desperate, misguided, and extreme" in a statement. "The country wants Congress to focus on jobs and the economy, not on pushing an extreme agenda against birth control," said Laguens.

    House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) didn't know Republicans had added the provision into the bill, even as the House was already debating the rule for bringing it up.

    "They did?" Becerra asked, during a Saturday night interview with The Huffington Post. "What part of their social agenda will they not stick into a budget bill?"

    Becerra called it "absurd" that an abortion-related provision found its way into the bill at the last minute. "We're less than three days from watching [Republicans] lead to a government shutdown. Now they want to reignite the war on women?" he asked. "It makes for theater, and that's what it is. If it weren't so serious, it would be hard not to laugh."

    The one-year delay passed by the House early Sunday faces almost certain failure in the Senate, which has objected to Republicans' attempt to use the government funding bill to delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

    "Once again House Republicans have found a way to mount an ideological attack on women's health as the clock ticks down on a crisis they created," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said in a statement Saturday night.
    "This is part of the right-wing playbook that's going nowhere in the Senate. The truly unconscionable thing is that Republicans would try to rob women of access to health care while holding our economy hostage."
    This post has been updated to reflect the House vote.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...p_ref=politics
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