Congress did not resolve its unrelenting dispute over the 2010 health care law Monday, leading to a partial shutdown of the federal government.
House Republicans put forth plans to pull apart the law known as Obamacare, with Senate Democrats swiftly rejecting them. Enrollment begins today in the law’s state-based health care exchanges.
Senate Democrats refused to accept changes to the law as a price for keeping the government open, and they were backed by veto threats from President Barack Obama. The standoff led to the first partial government shutdown since early 1996.
“You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job; for doing what you’re supposed to be doing anyway; or just because there’s a law there that you don’t like,” Obama said.
As the midnight deadline approached, House Republicans sought to form a bicameral conference committee with the Senate to hammer out the dispute. Senate Democrats refused a conference without a short term bill to keep the government running, leading to the shutdown.
The detour came on the heels of House Republicans’ Monday evening offer: A one-year delay in the law’s mandate that all individuals purchase health insurance, and a repeal of federal employer health insurance subsidies for members of Congress, their staff, the president and Obama administration appointees, who would be forced to purchase insurance on the exchanges.
“What I hope folks are seeing is the House has tried time and time again to find some middle ground, but the time of negotiating with ourselves has come to an end,” said Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Lawrenceville. “I have expected better from the Senate throughout this process. I hope I get it at this point.”
The Senate cast it aside, with the legislative game of ping-pong continuing into the night.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of federal civilian workers in Georgia are set to begin furloughs, while active-duty military and employees deemed essential to health and safety will carry on with their pay potentially delayed.
Social Security checks and food stamp benefits will continue to flow, but the food supplement program for Women and Infant Children will freeze. Federal grants for the Head Start program will halt, and it’s unclear how long programs in Georgia will be able to continue on existing funds.
The health care law will continue unabated in the event of a shutdown, including enrollment in the exchanges kicking off Tuesday.
The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be hit hard by any shutdown, said spokeswoman Barbara Reynolds.
The agency will not do multi-state outbreak investigations, rapid response to outbreaks, nor will the agency be monitoring the beginning of flu season. Its ability to watch other infectious disease outbreaks will be weakened.
Of the 13,000 CDC employees and staff around the world, only 4,000 will be working if the government shuts down, she said. Of those people, 3,000 are in what she called “uniformed services” or are staff on projects that have funding from sources other than the federal government.
Many of the remaining 1,000 that will be working are in Atlanta, just a portion of the headquarters’ 8,500 employees.
“We will be a skeletal crew,” she said.
Active-duty military troops will still be paid on time in a shutdown, thanks to a bill that passed both the Senate and the House unanimously. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Savannah, was a key backer of the troop provision.
That was all the Senate would allow. Georgia Republicans Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss voted “no” in party-line victories by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to set aside House plans.
“The House has – once again – attached political policy riders that are dead on arrival in the Senate,” Reid said Monday night. “But once again Democrats will not re-litigate the health care debate or negotiate at the point of a gun.”
In the House some moderate Republicans called for acquiescing to Democrats and passing a short-term spending bill with no strings attached, and there might have been enough bipartisan votes for it to pass if House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, brought it to the floor.
But the zeal for undoing the Affordable Care Act was undeterred among the House GOP rank and file. Ranger Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Graves has been one of the leaders of the charge to force a shutdown showdown over the health law.
For a few of the most conservative Republicans, delaying the individual health insurance mandate did not go far enough. Reps. Phil Gingrey of Marietta and Paul Broun of Athens voted against most of their Republican colleagues on that plan as it cleared the House because it did not fully defund or delay the law.
“I can’t vote for it because it’s $22 billion … worth of spending on Obamacare over the next year,” Gingrey said.
Rep. John Barrow of Augusta was among nine Democrats to cross the aisle and back the individual mandate delay.
Atlanta Democratic U.S. Rep. David Scott said Republicans are driven by personal animus against Obama. Asked about a compromise, he said Democrats already have given in to spending levels chopped down by across-the-board sequestration cuts.
“I think that this is a terrible precedent and it has to be stopped,” Scott said. Democrats cannot “allow hostage taking or shut the government down on anything that has already been vindicated.”
The shutdown was to be the first since one that spanned the end of 1995 and beginning of 1996, a stare-down between President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. A few brief shutdowns also occurred during budget battles between Democratic-run Congresses and Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Staff writer Michael Kanell contributed to this article.
