House GOP Shuts Down The Government

As I write this post, midnight is approaching, and the Republican Party still wants to follow the lead of a small band of suicidal teabaggers in their caucus and shut down the federal government -- and they're doing it intentionally. They keep saying they are trying to avoid a shutdown, but the fact that they keep including "poison pill" amendments in the resolution to fund the government (amendments they know the Democrats and the president cannot and will not agree to) shows they are being disingenuous.

When they sent the first continuing resolution to the Senate, the House Republicans included an amendment that would completely defund the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The Senate stripped that ridiculous amendment out of the continuing resolution and sent it back to the House.

The House Republicans then attached an amendment to that resolution that would delay the implementation of Obamacare for a year (on a 231 to 192 vote). The Senate again stripped the extraneous amendment out and sent the continuing resolution back to the House. At this point the House could have just passed a "clean" resolution (a resolution with "poison pill" amendments), but they weren't ready to stop playing political games.

The House GOP came up with two more amendments -- actually one poison pill and one reasonable amendment. The reasonable amendment, one I think should be accepted by the Democrats, is to remove the special subsidy to buy insurance that the Congress and congressional aides get, a subsidy that no other American can get. This amendment makes some sense, because there is no reason that Congress (or their employees) should get special help that no one else can get.

But the House didn't stop there. The teabaggers want a government shutdown, and to make sure that happens, they included another amendment (one they knew the Senate could not accept) -- to delay implementation of the individual mandate for another year, and they sent that back to the Senate on a 221 to 201 vote. It took the Senate less than an hour to once again strip the offending amendments out of the continuing resolution (by tabling them) and send the resolution back to the House.

The only question now is how long the Republicans want to keep the government shut down. If the teabagger caucus gets its way, the shutdown could last a while (maybe weeks), because they have wanted this shutdown for a while now. They don't care about the country, the economy or the people needing healthcare and a functioning government. They just want to oppose the president in everything. But there are a few more moderate right-wingers in the House GOP, and the length of the shutdown will depend on how long they can hold out before voting to fund the government.

UPDATE -- With only an hour to go before the government shutdown, the House Rules Committee met and decided to send their last bill, the one the Senate killed, to a conference committee with the Senate. And just to make sure the government was shut down, they included a rule that would ban any effort by House members to have a vote on a "clean" continuing resolution (one without amendments).

The Republicans know that a conference committee on a bill already killed by the Senate is just a joke, and has no chance of success. They just don't know what else to do without allowing a vote on funding the government (which would pass). It just shows that the House GOP wants a government shutdown. As I said before, the only question now is how long will the government shutdown last.

SECOND UPDATE -- At about 1:10am (EST), more than an hour after the government had shutdown, the House GOP tried to provide some cover for themselves by voting to send their ridiculous amendment-laden continuing resolution (which the Senate has already rejected) to a House-Senate conference committee. The vote was 228 to 199.

Unfortunately, the move will do nothing about the government shutdown. The Senate had adjourned almost an hour earlier, after Majority Leader Reid said the Senate would meet at about 9:00am (EST) to reject that call for a conference committee.

THE GOVERNMENT IS NOW OFFICIALLY SHUT DOWN.