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Time Is Short, but G.O.P. Leaders Say Shutdown Can Be Avoided Senate Action on Health Law Moves to Brink of Shutdown
(about 7 hours later)
WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders said on Sunday that they still believed a government shutdown beginning on Tuesday could be averted if Democrats would accept at least some of their demands to scale back President Obama’s health care law. WASHINGTON — The Senate is expected to reject decisively a House bill that would delay the full effect of President Obama’s health care law as a condition for keeping the government running past Monday, as Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, expressed confidence that he had public opinion on his side.
“I think the House will get back together, in enough time, send another provision not to shut the government down but to fund it, and it will have a few other options in there for the Senate to look at,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican whip, said on “Fox News Sunday.” Angering Republicans who lead the House, Mr. Reid kept the Senate shuttered on Sunday, declining to act on the House measure until Monday afternoon, just hours before the government’s spending authority runs out at midnight.
Specifically, Mr. McCarthy mentioned a tax on medical devices that pays for a part of the health care law. The House voted in the early hours of Sunday to rescind the tax and delay the health care law by a year as conditions for financing government operations and avoiding a shutdown. Without a complete capitulation by House Republicans, large sections of the government would close, hundreds of thousands of workers would be furloughed without pay, and millions more would be asked to work for no pay.
Those measures will be considered by the Senate when it convenes at 2 p.m. on Monday, just 10 hours before a stopgap measure to finance much of the government is set to expire. Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, has said that any bill that alters the president’s signature health care program would be dead on arrival in the upper chamber, although the device tax has critics in both parties and is seen as a possible subject of compromise. Polls show that the public is already deeply unhappy with its leaders in Congress, and the prospect of the first government shutdown in 17 years would be the latest dispiriting development. With a temporary shutdown appearing inevitable without a last-ditch compromise, the battle on Sunday became as much about blaming the other side as searching for a solution.
Some Republicans seemed offended that the Senate was waiting until its normally scheduled time on Monday to resume business — leaving the House with scant time to respond to the other chamber’s next move. House Republicans, who insisted that they had passed a compromise over the weekend that would avoid a shutdown if only the Senate would act, blamed Mr. Reid for purposely running out the clock.
“There’s no reason the Senate should be home on vacation” at such a time, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, one of the sharpest critics of the health care law, said Sunday on the NBC program “Meet the Press.” “Unlock those doors, I say to Harry Reid,” said Representative Ann Wagner, a Missouri Republican who stood on the steps of the empty Senate on Sunday with a dozen of her House colleagues. “Come out and do your job.”
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in that chamber, said he would be willing to consider the medical devices tax, “but not with a gun to my head, not with the prospect of shutting down the government.” But Mr. Reid sees little incentive or political advantage in bowing to those demands. He has held his 54-member caucus together so far. And because of support from some Senate Republicans who have called it a mistake for House Republicans to try to force changes to the health care law in an unrelated fight over the budget, Mr. Reid’s hand has been strengthened.
Asked whether he expected a shutdown, he said, in resigned tones, “I’m afraid I do.” Senator Susan Collins of Maine became the latest Republican to criticize her House colleagues, saying on Sunday that an effort to link the health care amendments to the budget was “a strategy that cannot possibly work.”
The legislative back-and-forth, which has brought the government to the brink of what would be its 18th shutdown, is expected to continue into late Monday as the House and Senate pursue separate paths. Mr. Reid’s plan, which exploits the bypasses and delays available to him in Senate procedure, leaves little time for the House to act before the Tuesday deadline. The Senate on Monday is expected to send back to the House a plain budget bill, stripped of its provisions to delay the full effect of the health care law, repeal a tax on medical devices and allow businesses to opt out of contraception coverage for their employees.
The Senate is expected on Monday to dispense of the House bill quickly and then send back to the House a budget bill that Republicans there have already rejected. All Mr. Reid needs are 51 Democrats to vote with him — not the usual 60-vote threshold required for most Senate business — and the spending bill will go back to the House in a matter of minutes. Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, said that he had been canvassing Senate Democrats from Republican states and that the party remained unified.
“Until they send us a clean bill, we’re going to table whatever else they send us,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democrat. Senate Democrats plan to emphasize a message that the blame for any shutdown rests squarely with Republicans. “They can decide at that point whether they’ll shut down the government or not,” Mr. Durbin said.
It was not clear what would happen once the ball was back in the House’s court. House Republicans have shown no willingness to accept anything other than a budget that curtails elements of the health care law. Republicans would then face a difficult choice. Speaker John A. Boehner could risk the ire of his more conservative members and put the Senate bill on the floor for a straight up or down vote, a route that his more moderate members have begun urging him to take.
Mr. McCarthy, the Republican whip, insisted that the door was open to a last-minute deal. “We will not shut the government down,” he said. “If we have to negotiate a little bit longer, we will continue to negotiate,” perhaps with an extension of government financing that might last only a few days. Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, said on Sunday that he was actively courting Republicans and Democrats to get behind a temporary spending bill to avert a shutdown, even if it contained none of the additional measures the House passed over the weekend.
But no one, for now, appears to be negotiating, and Democrats have expressed little desire to do so, despite repeated goading from Republicans who say the blame for a shutdown should thus go to the Democrats. “I’m prepared to vote for a clean resolution tomorrow,” Mr. Dent said. “It’s time to govern. I don’t intend to support a fool’s errand at this point.”
Mr. Cruz, the Tea Party Republican who took to the Senate floor for 21 hours last week to argue for defunding the health care program, said on NBC that Mr. Reid had “essentially told the House of Representatives and the American people, go jump in a lake. He said, I’m not willing to compromise; I’m not willing to even talk.” Republican lawmakers said on Sunday that the House leadership had one more card to play, but that it was extremely delicate. They can tell Mr. Reid he must accept a face-saving measure, like the repeal of the tax on medical devices, which many Democrats support, or they will send back a new amendment that would force members of Congress and their staffs, and the White House staff, to buy their medical insurance on the new health law’s insurance exchanges, without any subsidies from the government to offset the cost.
Mr. Cruz added: “I hope he backs away from that ledge that he’s pushing us toward. But that is his position.” Republicans expressed certainty that for all the discomfort a shutdown would inflict on Capitol Hill, Democrats would not risk it to protect their own benefits.
A fellow conservative Republican, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, sounded a similar note. “We are the party that’s willing to compromise,” he said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “They are the party that says, no way, we’re not touching Obamacare.” “The concern is palpable,” said Representative Reid Ribble, Republican of Wisconsin. “It will affect everybody, their staff, their budgets. But the American people feel we’re getting an unfair break.”
Many veteran Republicans, including the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, have cautioned that the party would suffer if the government were shut down. The Republican House leadership indicated on Sunday that it was planning to amend whatever the Senate sends back Monday.
But in the House, Speaker John A. Boehner’s move on Saturday to include provisions in the House budget that appeased the most conservative Republicans was seen as a sign that he was again allowing newer and more right-leaning members to control the agenda. “I think the House will get back together in enough time, send another provision not to shut the government down, but to fund it,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority whip. “And it will have a few other options in there for the Senate to look at again.”
Many rank-and-file Republicans remain convinced that the public will not blame them for a shutdown. They cited several reasons the equation had changed since 1996, when a government shutdown helped reverse their party’s fortunes. Getting to that point would require agreement from a group of conservative Republicans who have often acted in discord with the rest of their conference. And it would require them to drop objections to defunding the health care law or delay the law’s full implementation for a year. People can begin signing up for insurance coverage under the law starting on Tuesday.
Part of this confidence comes from the belief that the unpopularity of the Affordable Care Act, which will go into wider effect on Tuesday when people can begin signing up for insurance plans under the law, makes it easier to demand that it be delayed and defunded. They claim a mandate from the public — one that runs far stronger in conservative districts than it does elsewhere. Representative Pat Tiberi, an Ohio Republican and close ally of Mr. Boehner, said House Republicans believed that they had already compromised by backing away from their demand that the health care law be defunded. Members of the large bloc of conservatives that often dictate the House agenda said they would not vote for any further government spending unless the health care law was gutted. The speaker talked them back this weekend to a one-year delay.
Democrats counter that the program will gain popularity as it begins to take effect, is better understood, and provides real benefits. “Harry Reid likes to excoriate the Tea Party members of our conference for not compromising, when he’s doing the exact same thing,” Mr. Tiberi said.
Mr. Durbin said Mr. Reid’s resolve not to compromise has been helped by the shenanigans in the House, what he views as game-playing in the Senate by hard-liners like Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, and a sense that now is the time to break the power of Tea Party Republicans.
“He has his caucus, and he has his president. And third, which should be first, this is what he believes,” Mr. Durbin said of Mr. Reid. “He’s sick and tired of the Tea Party caucus.”
Complicating matters further, Mr. Cruz, who thrilled the conservative base last week with a 21-hour verbal assault on the health care law, has been urging House members to hold firm.
There are many Republicans who are convinced that the public would not automatically blame them for a shutdown, and they sought over the weekend to make the case that Mr. Obama and Mr. Reid were slowing the process to score political points. They seized on a pair of images they hoped would resonate with the public: Mr. Obama playing golf on Saturday, and Mr. Reid keeping the Senate dark until Monday.
Mr. Boehner called Mr. Reid’s move “an act of breathtaking arrogance.”
The Capitol was quiet on Sunday. The action was on the morning talk shows, where leaders of both parties pointed fingers, and on the Senate steps, where Republicans gathered to demonstrate their anger at Mr. Reid. Neither Mr. Boehner nor Mr. Reid made any appearances.
With the government hurtling closer to a shutdown, the Republicans’ resolve has seemed only to irritate Mr. Reid more. In terms that are exceedingly antagonistic, Mr. Reid has insulted his Republican colleagues as “anarchists” and “rumps” and has called them the “weird caucus.”
And he has made little secret of the belief that the conservative wing of the House Republican conference has run roughshod over Mr. Boehner.
This month, at a private meeting of all four leaders of the two chambers — Mr. Reid; Mr. Boehner; Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader; and Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader — Mr. Reid tried to make light of the speaker’s difficulties with his more unmanageable members.
He told Mr. Boehner that he would trade two of the Senate’s more volatile members for two of the House’s, according to three people told of the exchange. Mr. Boehner chuckled, but did not entertain the idea for long. “You don’t want mine,” he said.

Brian Knowlton contributed reporting.