With 3 days left, no clear path to avoid shutdown
The pressure is on the House to solve the budget stalemate after the Senate passes a short-term spending bill.
- Defense Dept. scrambles to prepare
- How federal agencies plan to cope
Video: President Obama scolded House Republicans on Friday as a the possibility of a government shutdown continues to loom.With Washington barreling toward a government shutdown, a deadlocked Congress entered the final weekend of the fiscal year with no clear ideas of how to avoid furloughs for more than 800,000 federal workers. Millions more could be left without paychecks.
The Senate on Friday approved a stopgap government funding bill and promptly departed, leaving all of the pressure to find a solution on House Republican leaders.Graphic
Here's what some agencies have said about their specific plans in case of a government shutdown.Sign up for ‘The Showdown’ newsletter
Get the latest news on the budget fight and a possible government shutdown in this daily newsletter.Obama chides Republicans as shutdown looms
House Republicans vow to reject the short-term spending bill unless it defunds the new health-care law.Federal workers: Are you an ‘essential’ government employee?
If you could make a pitch to your boss for why you should continue working during a partial shutdown, what would it be?Here’s what the next six days in Congress might look like
Keeping track of the federal budget negotiations in Congress.President Obama weighed in, sternly lecturing GOP leaders that the easiest path forward would be to approve the Senate’s bill, which includes money for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the president’s prized legislation achievement, which he signed into law in 2010. But a far-right bloc of House and Senate Republicans banded together to leave House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) virtually powerless to act.
“My message to Congress is this: Do not shut down the government. Do not shut down the economy. Pass a budget on time,” Obama said in the White House press briefing room.
Boehner’s leadership team offered no public comment and remained out of sight most of Friday, hunkering down for another weekend on the brink. For Boehner, this is the latest in a series of unstable moments that have become the hallmark of his three-year run as speaker.
With a stroke-of-midnight deadline Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said Democrats would reject any conservative add-ons that Boehner might attach to the funding bill. That would further delay passage, and given the staunch opposition from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who has suggested that he will not help move the process along, the slow-moving Senate would require up to a week to approve something even if Reid were amenable to the changes. That sets the stage for a shutdown Tuesday.
“We’ve passed the only bill that can avert a government shutdown Monday night. I said this on the floor, I say it again: This is it, time is gone,” Reid said Friday after the midday passage of the funding bill on a party-line vote.
Before that final roll call, Cruz’s attempt to filibuster the legislation was throttled in a bipartisan 79-to-19 vote, but the first-year senator drew support from nearly half the rank-and-file Republicans in defiance of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Cruz confirmed reports that he has been huddling with House conservatives to help plot their strategy to force Boehner’s hand on Obamacare. “I am confident if the House listens to the people, as it did last week, that it will continue to step forward and respond to the suffering that is coming from Obamacare,” Cruz told reporters Friday, saying he has had “numerous conversations” with House Republicans.
Those Republicans upended a strategy crafted by Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to first advance legislation related to the federal borrowing limit, including more demands to delay Obamacare, then allow government funding to be approved.
That plan required the GOP leaders to draw all votes from their side of the aisle — 217 of the 232 Republicans — and instead the Cruz-backed contingent hold more than enough votes to sabotage any moves by Boehner and Cantor. Those House Republicans offered their version late Friday of what they want attached to the funding resolution and sent back to the Senate: an amendment delaying until 2015 implementation of all the health law’s taxes, mandates and benefits as well as its provisions aimed at squeezing savings from Medicare.
“A simple and reasonable way to ensure fairness for all is to provide every American the same one-year Obamacare delay that President Obama provided for businesses and others,” Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), the bill’s author, said in a written statement.
He has more than 60 co-sponsors.Keeping track of the federal budget negotiations in Congress.
While the health-care law has had some provisions delayed amid a wobbly rollout, Obama and Democrats oppose any effort to strip funding or delay implementation of the law as it begins a critical new period next week. The president warned that demands to delay Obamacare were even more reckless in connection with the raising debt limit, because the Treasury will run out of maneuvers to continue borrowing Oct. 17 and will head toward a first-of-its-kind default on the nearly $17 trillion debt. Economists have warned that a default would send a shock through global financial markets and would jolt interest rates.
“I don’t know how I can be more clear about this: Nobody gets to threaten the full faith and credit of the United States just to extract political concessions,” Obama said Friday.
Meanwhile, House leaders delayed consideration of their initial proposal to raise the federal debt limit until at least next week.
It was unclear Friday whether the debt-limit bill would require additional surgery, senior GOP aides said, since most of those who objected to the measure were concerned primarily about timing. However, a separate bloc of lawmakers complained that the bill — a grab bag of conservative agenda items ranging from tax reform to the rollback of environmental regulations — would do too little to cut spending. As written, the measure contained only around $200 billion in spending cuts over the next decade. Meanwhile it would suspend the debt limit through Dec. 5, 2014, permitting the Treasury Department to borrow an additional $1 trillion.
The bill has no hope of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate.
After a few noncontroversial votes naming federal buildings, the House adjourned Friday morning amid deep uncertainty about its next steps. Boehner and Cantor have called a noon Saturday caucus meeting in the Capitol basement to try to forge ahead.
For the moment, GOP leaders have given no indication they were willing to simply approve the Senate legislation. Such a move, some Republicans privately fear, could lead to a collapse of support among GOP lawmakers and result in the legislation passing largely on the strength of Democratic votes. That would leave Boehner, already the weakest speaker of the modern political era, even more politically wounded heading into the debt ceiling talks.
Several Republicans said Friday that they favor a “stick” approach — an amendment so distasteful to Democrats that they might feel compelled to return to the negotiating table. Others favor a “carrot” approach, attaching an item Democrats would find hard to refuse — including possibly delaying sequestration cuts for a year in exchange for delaying implementation of Obamacare for a year. They did not detail the specifics of either approach.
However, with Graves holding potentially several dozen votes, no Republican could offer a sound explanation for how they would avert a shutdown next week.
Before the Senate votes, Reid denounced as “anarchists” the Cruz-led Republicans who he said were driving the country toward economic devastation. Keeping track of the federal budget negotiations in Congress.
“Today the Republican Party has been infected by a small destructive faction,” Reid said. “These extremists are more interested in putting on a show, as one Republican colleague put it, than legislating.”
The situation is in such flux that some of the most strident conservatives cast votes to filibuster the government funding bill — effectively endorsing shutting down the government — and yet immediately after warned it would not succeed in hindering the health law.
“Obamacare will continue. America’s going to have to judge whether it’s a good thing or bad thing. I still think Obamacare is going to be bad for part-time workers, for workers who may lose their insurance. I think it’s bad for the country,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a leading contender for his party’s 2016 presidential nomination.
He suggested that the fight against Obamacare had been lost for now and that the GOP should move on to other issues.
One veteran of the mid-1990s shutdowns, which also pitted a Democratic president against a Republican speaker, warned a temporary shutdown was increasingly likely.
“It depends if wisdom trumps energy. It hasn’t thus far, has it?” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said, a dig at those who want to continue the campaign against Obamacare.
Coburn, a freshman House member in the 1990s shutdowns, said it wouldn’t matter much until Oct. 15. That’s when the first paychecks for service members — including those on the front lines of Afghanistan — would not go out.
“When you start getting into military pay, that’s serious. When the people defending this country can’t pay their house payments, things they need to do. . . . We’ll fold like hot cakes if they shut down. Republicans will,” Coburn predicted.
Rosalind S. Helderman, William Branigin and Jackie Kucinich contributed to this report.
Glitches cast a shadow over the launch of Obamacare
Millions are supposed to be able to buy health insurance starting Tuesday.
Sen. Ted Cruz's 21-hour speech energized conservatives. (Melina Mara/Post)
Here’s a numerical take on the possible outcomes of the looming government shutdown.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP -
Ron Kirby, a member of the Tea Party, holds a sign against
Obamacare outside the Senate side of the Capitol in Washington,
Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013, in support of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Maybe, but perhaps not on Tuesday — the day that millions of Americans are supposed to be able to start buying coverage under the sweeping law referred to as Obamacare.
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Some people who had planned events in conjunction with the opening of the marketplaces have called them off.
“We just kind of laughed and said, ‘Well, I guess we’ll have to reschedule,’ ” said Jason T. Andrews, an insurance broker in California. He had planned on Tuesday to get on the state’s online marketplace and enroll a couple of people who were excited about the health-care law and wanted to be among the first to sign up for coverage.
But he hasn’t been certified by the state to do the work. He hasn’t been able to see the exact rates his clients would have to pay on the marketplace. And he’s not confident that California’s site will be up and running, and fully functioning, come Tuesday. California officials insist the marketplace will be ready, and that the brokers will be certified in early October.
Obama administration officials have warned there might be rough spots in the early days. They also have said those problems aren’t likely to prevent people from signing up for coverage that starts Jan. 1, when many of the law’s benefits and consumer protections kick in.
However, widespread problems on Tuesday, if they occur, will further fuel Republican attacks on the law’s viability. The program is at the center of a standoff between the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill that could lead to a government shutdown on the very day the marketplaces are to open and an eventual default on the nation’s debt.
Under the law, more low-income citizens will become eligible for Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor, while others will receive federal subsidies to help pay their premiums for private coverage bought on the marketplaces. Some of the marketplaces, also called exchanges, are being operated by the states, but most are being run at least partly by the federal government.
Some problems could be worse than mere glitches:
In the District, people who use the online marketplace will not immediately learn if they are eligible for Medicaid or for subsidies.
In Oregon, people will not initially be able to enroll in an insurance plan on the Web site.
In Vermont, the marketplace will not be ready to accept online premium payments until November.
In California, it could take a month for an insurer to receive the application of someone who applies for coverage on the exchange on Oct. 1.
“Nobody is going to say we’re not starting on October 1,” said Joel Ario, a health-care consultant who formerly oversaw exchanges at the Department of Health and Human Services. “But in some situations, you may see a redefinition of what ‘start’ means.”
From a practical standpoint, a slow start might not have a big impact on consumers. According to the latest poll by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, just 12 percent of the uninsured know that open enrollment starts Oct. 1.School cafeterias and vending machines will become more fat- and sugar-free in effort to battle bulge.
One problem insurers have pointed out is that there are some errors in the premiums that shoppers would see online. A senior administration official said that such problems are being worked on and that the marketplaces will be ready on time.
But as the launch nears, more delays are occurring. On Thursday, the administration announced a delay in the online shopping system for small businesses and confirmed that the Spanish-language site for signing up for coverage will be delayed until mid-October. Earlier in the week, officials said Medicaid applications will not be electronically transferred from the federally run exchange to states until November.
Jon Kingsdale, former head of the Massachusetts health exchange who is now a consultant to many states about their exchanges, described a particularly worrisome problem. In testing, he said, some exchanges have been unable to immediately send to insurers information about what amounts consumers would owe for health plans. The impact should be minimal if addressed in October.
“If that isn’t working on an automated basis by the end of October, we’re really in deep doo-doo,” Kingsdale said.
On Thursday, President Obama touted the ease with which people will be able to buy health insurance on the federally run marketplace, Healthcare.gov.
“Now, this is real simple,” he said during his speech at Prince George’s Community College. “It’s a Web site where you can compare and purchase affordable health insurance plans side by side the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak, same way you shop for a TV on Amazon.”
He said there would be glitches but predicted they would be few and exaggerated by political foes. “They’ll have their cameras ready to document anything that doesn’t go completely right,” he said.
Joanne Peters, an HHS spokeswoman said: “The Health Insurance Marketplace will open in every state on October 1. As we have said, we expect that adjustments will be needed along the way, and will be ready to address them.” She said that thousands of in-person helpers have been certified across the country.
Special troubleshooting teams also will be available around the clock.
Still, Colorado’s marketplace, Connect for Health Colorado, decided to delay certain online functions after testing fell behind. People seeking to buy coverage with federal subsidies in the initial weeks will at some point have to call a hotline to finish the process.
“We don’t feel comfortable with it running automated right now,” spokesman Ben Davis said.
The Colorado marketplace was testing more than 100,000 types of scenarios that it might encounter, ranging from relatively simple situations with individuals to more complex cases involving sprawling families. In the more difficult situations, software that was supposed to determine the size of a subsidy was not always coming up with the right number.
In some places, applicants may run into trouble initially finding people to assist them through the enrollment process.
As of Friday, Iowa had no certified “navigators” — groups and individuals who have been approved to serve as in-person helpers. State officials expect the navigators to be certified by Tuesday.
On the federally run marketplaces, the system for brokers to become certified to help people sign up on the marketplaces has been plagued with problems, say insurance brokers.
The certification site “ is constantly crashing. It’s been a complete pain,” said Wes Bissett, senior counsel for state government affairs at the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America.
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