House votes to derail Obamacare, fund government

Saturday, September 21, 2013

House votes to derail Obamacare, fund government

King 5 .com

Credit: TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

View taken on November 20, 2009 shows the US Senate and Capitol Dome.

by ANDREW TAYLOR / Associated Press

Posted on September 20, 2013 at 8:40 AM

Updated today at 8:41 AM

WASHINGTON -- The GOP-controlled House voted Friday to cripple President Barack Obama's health care law as part of a risky ploy that threatens a government shutdown in a week and a half.
The fight is coming on a stopgap funding measure required to keep the government fully running after the Oct. 1 start of the new budget year. Typically, such measures advance with sweeping bipartisan support, but tea party activists forced GOP leaders -- against their better judgment -- to add a provision to cripple the health care law that's the signature accomplishment of Obama's first term.
The 230-189 vote sets the stage for a confrontation with the Democratic-led Senate, which promises to strip the health care provision from the bill next week and challenge the House to pass it as a simple, straightforward funding bill that President Barack Obama will sign.
The top Senate Democrat has pronounced the bill dead and calls the House exercise a "waste of time." The White House promises Obama will veto the measure in the unlikely event it reaches his desk.
The temporary funding bill is needed because Washington's longstanding budget stalemate has derailed the annual appropriations bills required to fund federal agency operations.
The fight over the must-do funding bill comes as Washington is bracing for an even bigger battle over increasing the government's borrowing cap to make sure the government can pay its bills. Democrats say they won't be held hostage and allow Republicans to use the must-pass measures as leverage to win legislative victories that they otherwise couldn't.
The No. 2 House Democrat, Steny Hoyer of Maryland said the GOP ploy is a "blatant act of hostage-taking" fueled by Republicans' "destructive obsession with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and its unrestrained hostility towards government."
Republicans countered that the measure is required to prevent a government shutdown that would delay pay for federal workers, send non-essential federal workers home, close national parks and shutter passport offices. Essential programs like air traffic control, food inspection and the Border Patrol would keep running and Social Security benefits, Medicare and most elements of the new health care law would continue.

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