House Republicans explore strategy to avoid federal government shutdown
Video: Budget expert Stan Collender, author of "The Guide to the Federal Budget," explains why he's certain that the government will shut down next week.
With federal agencies set to close their doors in five days, House Republicans began exploring a potential detour on the path to a shutdown: shifting the fight over President Obama’s health-care law to a separate bill that would raise the nation's debt limit.
If it works, the strategy could clear the way for the House to approve a simple measure to keep the government open into the new fiscal year, which will begin Tuesday, without hotly contested provisions to defund the Affordable Care Act.
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But it would set the stage for an even more nerve-racking deadline on Oct. 17, with conservatives using the threat of the nation’s first default on its debt to force the president to accept a one-year delay of the health-care law’s mandates, taxes and benefits.
Obama administration officials dismissed the plan, vowing that there would be no delay of the insurance initiative, which is set to begin enrolling consumers Tuesday. They argued that Republicans risk destroying their own credibility among voters, who strongly disapprove of such brinkmanship regardless of their views on the Affordable Care Act.
“Once you start saying ‘delay’ with something as damaging as the default of the United States, people hear the second part: They hear the default,” said White House strategist David Simas, speaking at a breakfast held by Third Way, a moderate Democratic group.
GOP leaders met for nearly 90 minutes Wednesday afternoon to discuss the strategy, which they plan to present to rank-and-file lawmakers Thursday morning. If it wins approval, the leaders hope to introduce the debt-limit bill Thursday and hold a vote as soon as Saturday — letting GOP lawmakers mount a fresh assault on the health-care law before deciding whether to shut down the government.
The debt-limit bill will be loaded with dozens of other conservative priorities, including the approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
Rep. Steve Southerland (Fla.), who attended the meeting on behalf of the massive class of GOP lawmakers elected in 2010, sidestepped questions about whether conservatives would be willing to trade the leverage of a government shutdown for the leverage of a default.
Leaders are “running the traps on every conceivable formula,” he said. “We’re looking at every possibility.”
The strategizing in the House came as Senate Democrats advanced a slow but inevitable campaign to approve a measure to keep the government open without undermining the president’s most significant legislative achievement, commonly known as Obamacare.
After conservative Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) staged a 21-hour attack on the law, he joined all 99 of his Senate colleagues Wednesday in voting to end his filibuster and start debating a House-passed bill that would fund the government through Dec. 15.
As written, that measure also would defund Obamacare. But after a long debate expected to stretch into the weekend, Senate rules permit Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to strip out the anti-Obamacare provisions, change the expiration date on the funding bill to Nov. 15, and pass the measure with a simple majority achieved entirely with Democratic votes.
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