People run for cover as police converge to
the site of a shooting on Capitol Hill in Washington. Photograph: Mandel
Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
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The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe tweets a picture of TV screens at the Capitol advising "shelter in place–gunshots":
(h/t @katierogers)
The Guardian's Dan Roberts reports "lots of sirens here in Farragut Square, heading east toward Capitol Hill." Dan says this morning at the Capitol complex:
I was struck by how deserted it was due to all the furloughed
employees. Most tours have been cancelled too, for the public, just a
few visitors to galleries.
There was no obvious let-up in security however.
Nancy Pelosi reports "temporary lockdown":
All Members and staff, we are in temporary lockdown as Capitol police work quickly to secure the area. Please stay safe.
— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) October 3, 2013
CNN's Dana Bash says Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, just "popped in and told us, 'one injury.'"
The scene.
The US Capitol is in lockdown, Reuters reports.
Reports of shots fired near the US Capitol building. Reuters reports:
US Capitol police have reports of shots fired at 2nd St and Constitution Avenue NE, several injured.
Updated
A chart suggesting there's already sufficient uncertainty over how the US will handle its debt ceiling to change investors' perceptions of the quality of T-bills:
It's debt ceiling ping-pong.Earlier today
Senate majority leader Harry Reid said he would allow no strings to be
attached to legislation to raise the debt limit. "We will act on a clean
debt ceiling," he said.
Now a spokesman to speaker John Boehner says the House cannot pass a clean debt ceiling bill:
"House Speaker John Boehner has always said that the United States
will not default on its debt. He also always says that there aren't
votes in the House to pass a 'clean' debt limit bill. That's why we need
a bill with cuts and reforms," said the unnamed spokesman, quoted by
Reuters.
Question for Carney: Why doesn't the president meet with Republicans in the House who are ready to vote yes on a "clean" house spending bill?
"I don't have a strategic plan to unveil to you today on how the
president can convince the speaker to do the right and credible thing
here," Carney says."...The president has met with compromise-minded
Republicans all year long."
With that the daily White House briefing concludes.
Carney is asked: What exactly was the president trying to achieve when he said that Wall Street should be worried?
Yesterday Obama told CNBC " I think they should be concerned." The markets began the day with a bracing dive before recovering (see post).
Carney replies:
People need to understand that this isn't just political theater
here. As we're seeing with the current shutdown, it is not entirely
clear who's running the show in one house of Congress... That's a pretty
precarious situation.
Carney says the administration would not consider ending the tax on medical devices that helps pay for Obamacare as a potential concession to achieve a stopgap spending deal.
The White House won't negotiate over Obamacare, and the tax is part of that, Carney says.
Q: Are you ruling that out?
A: As a condition of reopening the government, yes.
"I'm simply echoing [Republicans] in calling on the speaker of the house" to vote, Carney says.
The only factor blocking House speaker Boehner from bringing a vote
to reopen the government, Carney says, "are the demands of 30 to 60
members of the Tea Party caucus, the most extreme members of his conference."
Hopefully thespeaker will cut his losses here, and not just his losses... and do the right thing and just allow the vote.
Carney describes a plain and firm White House stance. He's asked,
"Does that mean you have to have a clean CR before [Obama] negotiates
anything else?"
Carney: "Yes."
Carney says the president cannot unilaterally raise the debt ceiling, contra analysts who have said Obama could act under the 14th amendment, a catchall that states in part
" The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by
law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for
services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be
questioned."
Carney says the president does not have the power to raise the debt ceiling and that would not work anyway:
This administration does not believe that the 14th amendment gives
the president the power to ignore the debt ceiling... [and] the fact
that there's significant controversy... means it's not a credible
alternative.:
He says the president's having to act unilaterally would not uphold "faith and credit" in the dollar.
The constitution gives Congress, not the president, the authority to borrow money. And only Congress can raise the debt ceiling.
Carney is asked about enrollment in new health care programs under the Affordable Care Act. He's challenged on the stats on web "visitors" the administration has been throwing around:
Here's what we know. In the two days since the marketplace has
opened, 7m people have visited healthcare.gov – that's unique visitors.
That's more than visit Southwest Airlines in a month! And that's a
pretty popular web site.
This is a six-month process. We are two days into it.
As far as enrollment so far, Carney says "We don't have that data, and we're focused on improving the consumer experience."
Carney is asked how the president can contemplate departing for Asia on Sunday
with the shutdown in effect. Carney says the White House does not
assume the shutdown will remain in effect and that the House should call
a vote. He says the point of the Asia trip – the president is to visit
Indonesia and Brunei but skip originally planned later stops in Malaysia
and the Philippines – is in part to build partnerships to strengthen
the US economy.
FEMA has begun to recall furloughed employees to
prepare for the impact of tropical storm Karen on the Gulf coast, White
House spokesman Jay Carney says in the daily briefing.
"The president directed his team to keep him appraised," Carney said, nonsensically.
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi says she was "proud" of President Obama's performance in a meeting with Republican leaders Wednesday evening.
"I was so proud of the president last night because he was very clear
about not negotiating on the full faith and credit of the USA," Pelosi
said in a weekly briefing.
Pelosi also said that Republicans should accept the "clean" spending resolution passed in the Senate because it uses a baseline spending level
of $986 billion, which includes the sequester cuts, versus the $1.058
trillion level favored by Democrats. The $986bn continuing resolution
has some analysts saying that Republicans have already won the current
budget fight, because Democrats have conceded the sequester.
Pelosi said:
I remind you that what the Senate bill contains is the number 986,
which is what the House Republicans proposed... even though it is a
figure that we have mostly opposed, but not when the issue is, are you
going to shut the government down.
Senate majority leader Harry Reid will not accept any of what the
president called "partisan strings attached" to legislation to raise the
debt ceiling, he tells reporters. "We will act on a clean debt ceiling," Reid said, according to Reuters.
The senate has likewise passed 'clean' legislation to fund the government but the House has so far declined to vote on it.
The markets are beginning to show some serious dislike of how very shutdown the shutdown is seeming on Day 3, Guardian business correspondent Dominic Rushe (@dominicru) reports:
US stock markets are reacting badly to the continuing impasse. The
Dow is already down 158 points, just over 1%. It has fallen for eight of
the last 10 trading days.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's, told me yesterday that he
would expect to see losses increase rapidly if the shutdown continues
into next week.
UPDATE: (Reuters) - European shares dipped on Thursday
as doubts over how the United States will resolve a budget standoff
that has shut down parts of the government took their toll, while
Schneider Electric was hit by a broker downgrade.
The euro zone's blue-chip Euro STOXX 50 index closed down by 0.6
percent at 2,902.12 points, while the broader pan-European FTSEurofirst
300 index fell 0.4 percent to 1,242.18 points.
In his speech Thursday, the president warned a US government default could have worldwide consequences.
Updated
At the start of the day we promised a look at the video ad in the Virginia governor's race in which Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe uses Senator Ted Cruz to batter Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli.
Virginia was the top recipient of federal contracts during the last fiscal year, Politico reports, making furloughs a potent issue. Here's the ad:
Polling in the race has indicated that McAuliffe has a mid-single
digit lead that appears to be holding, while Cuccinelli's net
favorability is underwater. Voting is in November.
copy http://www.theguardian.com/
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