Republican clash with Obama adds risk of shutdown

House Speaker John Boehner and Republicans leaders tried to craft a spending bill that would avoid a fiscal showdown on October 1.

With 10 days left before current funding runs out, it's not at all clear their plan will work, and the risk of a government shutdown is intensifying.

Republicans in the House on Friday voted to choke off funding for President Barack Obama's health care law in the stopgap spending Bill. Senate Democratic leaders said they won't pass a bill that takes money away from the 2010 health-care law.

With Republican Ted Cruz vowing to hold a filibuster, the Senate debate could drag out through the week and into next weekend. Once the health measure is stripped out, House Republican leaders could revise the bill and send it back to the Senate as time runs out, raising the risk of a shutdown.

"We have a long way to go," Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, told reporters yesterday in Washington. "This may send something back, we may send something back."

Some Senate Republicans, including John McCain of Arizona, have said the chamber won't pass changes to the health law. McCain, in an interview this week, called efforts to defund the law a political "suicide note."

After passing the bill 230-189 to keep the government open through December 15 and strip health-law funding, party leaders outlined plans for raising the ceiling on government borrowing. Republican leaders said they will offer a bill that will cut billions of dollars in spending, delay the health law and ease regulations in a bid to force concessions from Obama.

Shutdown looms
The twin fiscal fights are testing the Republicans' resolve in stopping the health law and Obama's insistence on implementing it without delay. If Congress doesn't act, the government will shut October 1 and be unable to borrow to pay all its bills later in the month. Each side is counting on the other to blink first.

Obama on Saturday urged lawmakers to meet the deadlines for reaching an agreement on government spending and on raising the nation's borrowing limit. "I will not allow anyone to harm this country's reputation, or threaten to inflict economic pain on millions of our own people, just to make an ideological point," the president said in his weekly address.

House Republicans said they wouldn't accept Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's plan to remove the health-care language from the bill next week and warned of a temporary government shutdown after the fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

"We'll add some other things that they hate and make them eat that, and we'll play this game up until either September 30, October 3, somewhere in between," said first-term Representative Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican. "Harry Reid's going to realise we're serious and hopefully at that point, he'll begin to negotiate with us."