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House Plans Funding Bill, With Conditions House Plans Funding Bill, With Conditions
(about 2 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Facing the prospect of the first shutdown of the federal government in 17 years, House Republicans chose a hard line on Saturday with a proposal to delay President Obama’s health care law for one year and permanently repeal a tax on medical devices that helps pay for the law. WASHINGTON — The federal government on Saturday barreled toward its first shutdown in 17 years after House Republicans chose a hard line, demanding a one-year delay of President Obama’s health care law and the repeal of a tax to pay for the law before approving any funds to keep the government running.
The House is expected to vote late Saturday on the legislation, which would keep the government operating past 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday. But the Senate, controlled by Democrats, has said it will not accept changes to the health care law as a condition for keeping the government open, all but ensuring that much of the government will shut down unless lawmakers can agree on a short-term spending bill while negotiations continue. Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting Saturday unified and confident that they had the votes to delay the health care law and eliminate its tax on medical devices. But before the House had even voted, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, said the Senate would strip out both health care provisions.
Indeed, the House Republican package would also ensure that military personnel continue to be paid in the event of a government shutdown, an acknowledgement that a shutdown was likely. The House’s action all but assured that large swaths of the government would be shuttered as of 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday. More than 800,000 federal workers deemed “non-essential” faced furloughs, and millions more could be working without paychecks.
A separate House Republican bill would also ensure that military personnel continue to be paid in the event of a government shutdown, an acknowledgement that a shutdown was likely. The health law delay and the troop funding bill was set for House passage Saturday. 
“The American people don’t want a government shutdown, and they don’t want Obamacare,” House Republican leaders said in a joint 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.”“The American people don’t want a government shutdown, and they don’t want Obamacare,” House Republican leaders said in a joint 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.”
Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, showed a flare of temper when asked what would happen when the Senate rejected the House’s offer. 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 his temper when asked what will happen when the Senate rejects the House’s offer.
“How dare you presume a failure?” he asked. “We continue to believe there’s an opportunity for sensible compromise, and I will not accept from anybody the assumption of failure.” “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.”
Even so, House Republicans on Saturday appeared ready to let the government shut down, at least for “a very brief” time, said Representative Doug Lambron, Republican of Colorado. Mr. Reid made that clear failure was inevitable. “After weeks of futile political games from Republicans, we are still at square one,” Mr. Reid 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.”
Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, shrugged off the drama. “The federal government has shut down 17 times before, sometimes when the Democrats were in control, sometimes with divided government,” she said. “What are we doing on our side of the aisle? We’re fighting for the American people.” 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.
On Friday, the Senate passed a stopgap bill to keep the government running through Nov. 15 without the health care provisions. Then Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, sent the Senate home for the weekend, leaving little time for that chamber to vote on any House legislation that could avoid a shutdown before the fiscal year ends. House 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 funded 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 government shutdown would not do serious political damage to his party.
In his weekly address on Saturday, Mr. Obama said: “Republicans in the House have been more concerned with appeasing an extreme faction of their party than working to pass a budget that creates new jobs or strengthens the middle class. And in the next couple days, these Republicans will have to decide whether to join the Senate and keep the government open, or create a crisis that will hurt people for the sole purpose of advancing their ideological agenda. The American people have worked too hard to recover from crisis to see extremists in their Congress cause another one.” With no guarantee that Democrats would help him out of his jam, 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 intraparty warfare among Republicans.
Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, the House Republican Conference chairwoman, used the weekly Republican address to shift the debate to an even more crucial deadline, Oct. 17, when Congress must raise the government’s statutory borrowing limit or precipitate a potentially catastrophic debt default. “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.”
“The president is now demanding that we increase the debt limit without engaging in any kind of bipartisan discussions about addressing our spending problem,” she said. “He wants to take the easy way out — exactly the kind of foolishness that got us here in the first place.” 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 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.
Individuals can enroll in insurance plans under the new health care law beginning on Tuesday. Mr. Reid, the majority leader, has already said he will not accept even that measure as a condition to keep the government operating. Even if he did, a single senator could slow action in the chamber well past the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline, and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, has said he will accept nothing short of a one-year delay.
A senior Senate Democratic leadership aide said the Senate will strip both health care provisions out of the bill and send it back to the House once again clean of policy prescriptions.
“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 chairs the Senate 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 whatever they can to derail the biggest legislative achievement of Mr. Obama’s presidency. Conservative anger over the law’s passage in 2010 helped propel them to power.
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. She described the House proposal as “fabulous” and said all House Republicans were in support. “We’re all getting behind this.”
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 afternoon, cheers and chants of “vote, vote, vote!” went up. As members left the meeting, many of them wore beaming grins.
“Let’s roll!” Representative John Culberson of Texas said he shouted to the Republican conference. That the Senate would almost certainly reject the health care delay, he added, was not a concern. “I can’t control what the Senate does. Ulysses S. Grant used to say, ‘Boys, quit worrying about what Bobby Lee is doing. And I want to know what we are doing.’ And that’s what the House is doing today, thank God.”
After the last shutdowns of 1995 and 1996, Republicans were roundly blamed. Their approval ratings plunged, and President Bill Clinton sailed to re-election. This time they insist they have a strategy that will shield them from the 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, who is running for the Senate next year.
But some Republicans acknowledged that Senate colleagues like Mr. Cruz, hurt their message by turning policy dispute into a personal crusade.
“I think that the rhetoric coming out of the Senate was a bit of sideshow and a circus and distracted people from what the real goal here was,” said Representative Michael Grimm of New York. “The goal was to stop a really onerous law from hurting a lot more families.”
Republicans readily acknowledged that the difficulty lies in what happens next. If the Senate sends them back a bill, it will most likely not contain a yearlong delay. Then Mr. Boehner has to decide whether he can put that measure on the floor, a move that would anger his conservative members.