New complications arose on Tuesday in the ongoing effort to stave off the US debt default and end the partial government shutdown as House Republicans came up with their own plan to deal with the crisis, putting in doubt the timely adoption of a bipartisan Senate plan having the White House nod.
Even as the Senate leaders indicated that they had all but sealed the bipartisan deal, proposing funding government agencies till January 15 and extending debt ceiling till February 7, House Republicans sprang a surprise by outlining their competing plan that also sought to include some stipulations against “Obamacare”.
Sure enough, the White House promptly rejected the Republican move to target Obamacare yet again, with a spokeswoman commenting: “The President has said repeatedly that Members of Congress don’t get to demand ransom for fulfilling their basic responsibilities to pass a budget and pay the nation’s bills.”
“Unfortunately, the latest proposal from House Republicans does just that, in a partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans,” the spokeswoman said. President Obama was to meet House Democrats in the afternoon.
Despite circulating their proposal, the House Republicans remained undecided on whether they would put the measure to vote. “There have been no decisions about what exactly we will do,” Speaker John Boehner told a news conference after a two-hour meeting with Republican members.
In what the Democrats see as a new pressure tactic, the House Republicans said their plan would follow the same timelines indicated under the Senate plan for ending the shutdown and raising the debt limit.
But, unlike the Senate proposal, the House Republicans included some provisions dealing with implementation of Obamacare, such as a two-year repeal of the medical device tax and a provision eliminating the employer health-care contribution for members of Congress and White House officials.
“We’re trying to find a way forward in a bipartisan way that would continue to provide fairness to the American people under Obamacare,” Boehner said. At the same time, he acknowledged that “there are a lot of opinions” within the Republican fold on how
to proceed.
The House Republicans move was seen to have thrown for now anyway a spanner in the Senate works. Although the Senate deal was not formally concluded, key lawmakers from both sides had expressed their hope that even the House would endorse the deal to end the government shutdown by funding federal agencies till January 15 and extend the debt limit till February 7 in return for hard negotiations on spending cuts.
News of the competing proposal from House Republicans completely changed the mood in the White House and on Capitol Hill. The Senate Republicans were to
be briefed at 11 am on the
deal hammered out by
Senators Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, but it had to
be deferred.
By the end of Monday, things seemed to have fallen in place, raising the possibility of meeting the October 17 deadline on raising the debt limit. “We’ve made tremendous progress. We are not there yet, but tremendous progress. And everyone just needs to be patient,” he had said on the Senate floor on Monday evening, adding: “Perhaps tomorrow will be a bright day.”
McConnell concurred with him, saying: “We’ve had a good day. I think it’s safe to say we’ve made substantial progress and we look forward to making more progress in the future.”
With the new round of confusion created by House Republicans, the Obama administration appeared to be keeping its fingers crossed on the chances of timely passage of the measure to raise the debt ceiling, given its critical global implications.