House votes to delay Obamacare, Nation bracing for government shutdown

Sunday, September 29, 2013

House votes to delay Obamacare, Nation bracing for government shutdown

House votes to delay Obamacare, raising government shutdown threat

Published time: September 29, 2013 04:51
Edited time: September 29, 2013 15:40

A man fills out an information card during an Affordable Care Act outreach event hosted by Planned Parenthood for the Latino community in Los Angeles, California September 28, 2013 (Reuters / Jonathan Alcorn)

The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives has voted to delay Obamacare by one year, raising the possibility of an Oct. 1 partial government shutdown. The vote plunges the US into fiscal crisis for the fourth time in last three years.
House Republicans pushed through the shutdown threat by 231 votes to 192, linking continued government funding through Dec. 15 to a demand that President Barack Obama delay his complicated plan aimed at extending access to healthcare for millions of Americans by one year. The vote went through after House Democrats and President Barack Obama refused to accept the Republicans’ conditions to keep the government operating.
The House also voted 248-174 to repeal a medical device tax that is intended to help fund Obama’s health care programs under the 2010 law.
Republicans have damned the controversial health care plan, dubbed “Obamacare,” as one based “on a limitless government, bureaucratic arrogance and a disregard of a will of the people.”
Trent Franks, a Republican congressman representing Arizona, said that he often had to choose between “something bad or [something] horrible,'' Bloomberg reported.
"The American people deserve to have time to see what this monstrosity will do before it is implemented," Texas Republican John Culberson shouted as he spoke of Obamacare.

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Boston.com

US bracing for government shutdown no one wants

The Associated Press House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., center, walks to the floor of the House for the final series of votes on a bill to fund the government, in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2013. Locked in a deepening struggle with President Barack Obama, the Republican-controlled House approved legislation early Sunday imposing a one-year delay in key parts of the nation's health care law and repealing a tax on medical devices as the price for avoiding a partial government shutdown in a few days' time. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

By ALAN FRAM / Associated Press / September 29, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States braced for a partial government shutdown Tuesday that no one in the seat of democracy seems to want or believes is good for the country, yet the only point of agreement in Washington is that the other political party is to blame.

If the midnight Monday deadline passes without a deal, a shutdown would affect a wide range of programs, from national parks to the Pentagon.

President Barack Obama and the leader of the Democratic-controlled Senate dismissed a late developing plan approved early Sunday by the GOP-run House that would delay by a year key part of the new health care law and repeal a tax on medical devices, in exchange for avoiding a shutdown.

The White House promised a veto and said Republicans were pursuing ‘‘a narrow ideological agenda ... and pushing the government toward shutdown.’’

Lawmakers spoke past one another on the Sunday talk shows, often rehashing the turbulent fights about the health overhaul that the Supreme Court has upheld, as the nation edged toward the first government shutdown in 17 years.

‘‘I agree we should have this debate, but we shouldn’t connect it to a government shutdown. That’s the fundamental disagreement between the two sides here,’’ said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.