House Republican leaders struggled Tuesday to win over conservatives for a plan that would keep the government running through mid-December and force the Senate to vote on derailing implementation of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.
House leaders unveiled the plan to rank-and-file Republicans Tuesday but it was met with skepticism from some prominent conservatives and landed with a thud among grassroots architects of the “defund ‘Obamacare’ ” drive.
The GOP plan would employ an unusual procedural trick to make sure that the tea party-backed assault on Obamacare is passed by the House as part of the stopgap funding bill but is decoupled from the measure when sent to the Senate.
The plan is designed to ensure smooth passage of the funding bill before the start of the new budget year and avoid a government shutdown that could be a political disaster for Republicans if they get saddled with the blame.
“Our goal here is not to shut down the government. Our goal is to cut spending and to stop Obamacare,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. “I believe that the strategy that was outlined to the members this morning accomplishes that.”
But it got poor reviews from some conservatives who see it as a thinly-veiled gimmick. They want to make the legislation to block the health care law part of a must-pass measure like the stopgap funding bill, which needs to be passed by the Democratic-led Senate and signed by the president if it is to become law.
More pragmatic Republicans note that Democrats could simply peel the provision off of the funding bill and stuff it back in the House’s face. Conservative activists, however, are insistent on marrying the two issues, and groups like the Heritage Foundation are pressuring GOP lawmakers to get behind it.
Hard-line lawmakers like Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., took to Twitter to denounce the leadership’s plan, calling it “hocus pocus.” Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., chairman of the influential Republican Study Committee, a group of conservatives that comprises a majority of the GOP caucus, said he couldn’t endorse the effort. And Senate Republicans behind the defunding drive, including Ted Cruz of Texas, blasted it as well.
House Democrats won’t vote for the GOP plan so it would require a united front among the Republican majority to pass it.
The difficulty in advancing the stopgap measure, known as a continuing resolution, doesn’t inspire confidence in Congress’ capacity to approve an even more important measure to increase the government’s $16.7 trillion borrowing cap. House and Senate leaders have yet to devise a strategy for grappling with the debt limit increase, which is required to avoid a first-ever default on U.S. obligations.
A spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said Cantor told his fellow Republicans Tuesday that GOP leaders would rejoin the battle against Obamacare when the House considers the debt limit.
The Democratic and Republican leaders of both the House and Senate have agreed to meet Thursday on the fall congressional agenda.
The deadline for action is looming. A new estimate by a Washington think tank predicted the United States could default on its obligations as early as Oct. 18 if Congress and the president fail to agree on legislation to raise the so-called debt limit.
The Bipartisan Policy Center’s estimate is in line with a warning last month by Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew that the government would exhaust its borrowing authority by mid-October and be left with just $50 billion cash on hand.
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