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The federal government on Sunday morning barreled toward its first shutdown in 17 years after the Republican-run House, choosing a hard line, voted to attach a one-year delay of President Obama's health care law and a repeal of a tax to pay for it to legislation to keep the government running.
The votes, just past midnight, followed an often-angry debate, with members shouting one another down on the House floor. Democrats insisted that Republicans refused to accept their losses in 2012, were putting contempt for the president over the good of the country and would bear responsibility for a shutdown. Republicans said they had the public on their side and were acting to protect Americans from a harmful and unpopular law that had already proved a failure.
The House first voted 248-174 to repeal a tax on medical devices, then voted 231-192 to delay the law's implementation by a year - just days before the uninsured begin enrolling in the law's insurance exchanges. The delay included a provision favoured by social conservatives that would allow employers and health care providers to opt out of mandatory contraception coverage.
But before the House had even voted, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, declared the House Bill dead. Senate Democrats are planning to table the Republican measures when they convene on Monday, leaving the House just hours to pass a stand-alone spending Bill free of any measures that undermine the health care law.The House's votes early Sunday all but assured that large parts of the government would be shuttered as of 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday. More than 8,00,000 federal workers deemed nonessential faced furloughs; millions more could be working without paychecks.
"The American people don't want a government shutdown, and they don't want Obamacare," House Republican leaders said in a 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."
A separate House Republican Bill passed unanimously Sunday morning to ensure that military personnel continued to be paid in the event of a government shutdown, an acknowledgment that a shutdown is likely.
"This is an astoundingly irresponsible way to govern," Hagel said, adding that a fully functioning military went beyond its uniformed forces to its civilian personnel. "If this continues, we will have a country that is ungovernable."
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 anger when asked what would happen when the Senate rejected the House's offer.
"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."
But Reid made it clear that failure was inevitable. "After weeks of futile political games from Republicans, we are still at Square 1," he 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."
The White House was just as blunt. "Any member of the Republican Party who votes for this bill is voting for a shutdown," the press secretary, Jay Carney, said in a written statement. The White House also said that the president would veto the House bill if approved by the Senate.
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.
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 financed 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 shutdown would not do serious political harm to his party.
With no guarantee that Democrats would help him, 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 Republicans' intraparty warfare.
"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."
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 2.3-per cent 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.
Mr. Reid has already said he would not accept even that measure as a condition to keep the government operating. Special parliamentary language in the House measure provided for rapid action Monday in the Senate that would once again most likely leave House Republican leaders with the option of approving a spending bill without policy prescriptions. But there was little indication they would accept it.
"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 leads the 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 what they can to derail the biggest legislative achievement of Mr. Obama's presidency.
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.
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, cheers and chants of "Vote, vote, vote!" went up. As members left the meeting, many wore beaming grins.
Representative John Culberson of Texas said that as he and his colleagues were clamoring for a vote, he shouted out his own encouragement. "I said, like 9/11, 'Let's roll!' " That the Senate would almost certainly reject the health care delay, he added, was not a concern. "Ulysses S. Grant used to say, 'Boys, quit worrying about what Bobby Lee is doing. I want to know what we are doing.' And that's what the House is doing today, thank God."
After the shutdowns of 1995 and 1996, Republicans were roundly blamed. Their approval ratings plunged, and President Bill Clinton sailed to re-election. This time they say they have a strategy that will shield them from 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.
Republicans readily acknowledged that the difficulty is what is next. If the Senate sends back a bill, it will most likely not have a yearlong delay. Then Mr. Boehner must decide whether to put that measure on the floor, which would anger his conservative members.
©The New York Times News Service
