Boehner gives incoming speaker parting gift with budget deal

msn

The Washington Post

Kelsey Snell

 

© Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images U.S. Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) (R) speaks as House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) (2nd L) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) (L)…
[Congressional leaders and White House are closing in on a budget deal]

 

Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner presented his newly forged budget deal to his Republican colleagues at a private meeting this morning, outlining his plan to avert another government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling as a parting gift to his successor.

The deal would increase federal spending by $80 billion over two years and raise the federal borrowing limit through 2017. The 144-page bill, which was released Monday shortly before midnight, was welcomed by Democrats who have been pushing for budget negotiations all year.
“We have a budget agreement,” said outgoing House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) after the meeting of House Republicans where the outlines of the deal were presented.

Boehner (R-Ohio), who will step down on Oct. 30, added that the alternative was a clean debt ceiling suspension with no extra funding for troops. “This is a good deal.”



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Congress has never seen anything quite like the House Freedom Caucus. At least since the Civil War, there hasn’t been a faction fighting both parties at the same time.

POLITICO

History Dept.

The Freedom Caucus’ Unprecedented Insurgency

At least since the Civil War, there hasn’t been a faction fighting both parties at the same time.

By Alan Greenblatt

October 18, 2015

AP Photo

Congress has never seen anything quite like the House Freedom Caucus. There’s always someone unhappy on Capitol Hill and it’s not unusual for malcontents to band together. A rebellion made up of members who refuse to work with either party, however, is something that hasn’t happened in living memory.

“This is an unusual and indeed unprecedented development in the history of the party,” says Geoffrey Kabaservice, a research consultant to the Main Street Partnership, a centrist GOP group.

 

 

Parties—particularly those with large majorities—almost inevitably split into factions. And congressional history is replete with examples of groups that balked at party leadership. But the insurgents we remember—the ones who weren’t quickly and completely marginalized—managed by and large to find common cause with members of the other party. Southern Democrats, for instance, forged a “conservative coalition” with Republicans that dominated Congress for much of the 20th century.

There hasn’t been a bloc like the Freedom Caucus for at least a century, one that refuses to work with its own party leadership while being steadfastly unwilling to reach across the aisle. “There have been groups that often broke from the party, but in doing so, they didn’t stand as a third force,” says former GOP Rep. Mickey Edwards. “This group is very different.”

The Freedom Caucus, rather than breaking from Republican ranks, has forced Republican leaders to break from them. It’s a perverse sort of political jujitsu. One of outgoing Speaker John Boehner’s supposed crimes was that he went begging Democrats for help passing legislation when he couldn’t find the votes within his own caucus. Some rank-and-file Republicans, meanwhile, have made a separate peace with Democrats on reviving the Export-Import Bank. Normally the opposite would happen and it would be the insurgents reaching across the aisle. But that presupposes an interest in governing.

“I can think of a number of major examples throughout history where a party has had divisions of consequence,” says Laura Blessing, a senior fellow at the Georgetown Government Affairs Institute. “It’s rare that those divisions would represent a position on the fringe of the political system, where they’re not working with either party.”

Both the tactics and the playing field have changed for today’s dissenters. In the past, some members would squawk at autocratic leadership or the stated policies of their own party and look for ways to disrupt proceedings, but they had some kind of endgame in mind. Once they deposed a leader or got their way on a key vote, they took some quiet satisfaction.

What is distinctive about the current crop of congressional rebels is their willingness to use any lever they can find to cause trouble—debt-ceiling fights, funding fights, leadership succession struggles. “The thing that (today’s) conservatives are very good at—because they don’t care about precedent or the party’s history—is trying out different things,” says Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin, a history of the decline of moderate Republicans.

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US Puts off Decision on Keystone XL Pipeline

The Most Important Leg of Keystone XL Is Getting Built

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US Puts off Decision on Keystone XL Pipeline

WASHINGTON April 18, 2014 (AP)

By JOSH LEDERMAN and DINA CAPPIELLO Associated Press

The Obama administration is putting off its decision on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, likely until after the November elections, by extending its review of the controversial project indefinitely.
In a surprise announcement Friday as Washington was winding down for Easter, the State Department said federal agencies will have more time to weigh in on the politically fraught decision — but declined to say how much longer. Officials said the decision will have to wait for the dust to settle in Nebraska, where a judge in February overturned a state law that allowed the pipeline's path through the state.
Nebraska's Supreme Court isn't expected to hear an appeal to that ruling until September or October, and there could be more legal maneuvering after the high court rules. So President Barack Obama will almost surely have until after the November congressional elections to make the final call about whether the pipeline carrying oil from Canada should be built.
Approving the pipeline before the election would rankle Obama's allies and donors in the environmental community, but nixing it could be politically damaging to vulnerable Democrats running this year in conservative-leaning areas.
"This decision is irresponsible, unnecessary and unacceptable," said Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, who faces a difficult re-election in oil-rich Louisiana. Landrieu said Obama was signaling that a small minority can tie up the process in the courts, sacrificing 42,000 jobs and billions in economic activity.
In an ironic show of bipartisanship, Republicans joined Landrieu and other Democrats like Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska in immediately condemning the announcement — the latest in a string of delays in a review process that has dragged on for more than five years.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., accused Obama of kowtowing to "radical activists" from the environmental community, while House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, called the decision "shameful" and said there were no credible reasons for further delay.
"This job-creating project has cleared every environmental hurdle and overwhelmingly passed the test of public opinion, yet it's been blocked for more than 2,000 days," Boehner said in a statement.
But environmental groups fighting the pipeline hailed the delay, arguing that it shows the State Department is taking the arguments against the pipeline seriously.
"This is definitely great news," said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president for the League of Conservation Voters. "We are very confident as they continue to examine the issues with the lack of legal route in Nebraska and the terrible climate impacts, at the end of the day the pipeline will be rejected."
Keystone XL would carry oil from western Canada's tar sands to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. The project requires State Department approval because it crosses an international border. The State Department vowed to move forward with other aspects of its review even while the situation in Nebraska remains in limbo.
"The agency consultation process is not starting over," the State Department said in a statement.
State Department officials said other U.S. agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, won't be notified of their new deadline for comment until the legal situation in Nebraska becomes clearer. Driving the delay is a concern that the legal wrangling could lead to a change in the pipeline's route that would affect agencies' assessments, said the officials, who weren't authorized to comment by name and demanded anonymity.

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US Extends Keystone Review as Pipeline Supporters Cry Foul

 By Ali Weinberg

Apr 18, 2014 3:16pm

The State Department says it needs more time to make a decision about whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline project, citing uncertainty about the route’s direction through Nebraska, which is currently under litigation there.
The department is delaying the deadline for eight federal agencies to submit their recommendations to on the pipeline, which President Obama had requested they do via an executive order. The original deadline was early May, but because Nebraska’s Supreme Court is hearing a case on the proposed Keystone route through that state, the agencies will have about two weeks after the case is closed to submit their recommendations.
The process ahead, including whether the State Department will have to redo its initial assessments on the project, now depends on the outcome of the Nebraska case – the conclusion of which a senior State Department official declined to speculate about Friday.
“I can’t render a judgment on when the final decision could take place. We want this to move as expeditiously as possible,” the official told reporters on a conference call.
The officials also noted that there had been an unprecedented 2.5 million public comments regarding the pipeline, which State Department staff and private contractors are still going through. Usually, the official said on the call, there are less than 100 public comments on pipeline projects.

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NSA reform measures quietly included in $1.1tn spending bill

Compromise spending package contains provisions asking the NSA to quantify the effectiveness of its surveillance program

• Dan Roberts in Washington
• 
  
• theguardian.com, Wednesday 15 January 2014 18.30 EST

House speaker John Boehner of Ohio leaves the House chamber after the final vote on a massive spending bill. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

Congress is calling on the National Security Agency to detail the effectiveness of its bulk data collection programmes and will outlaw certain types of domestic surveillance, using two little-noticed clauses included in its giant federal spending bill.
The $1.1tn budget bill passed the House of Representatives Wednesday afternoon by 359-67 votes and is expected to become law after clearing the Senate as soon as Friday.
But in a sign of pent-up reform pressure on Capitol Hill, two measures dealing with the NSA were quietly included in the 1,600-page spending text with relatively little fanfare – or opposition from the White House – and are likely to pave the way for more binding legislative efforts once President Barack Obama outlines his own response to the surveillance scandal on Friday.
The first, and more unexpected, of the two NSA budget measures directs the agency to reveal “the number of records acquired by the NSA as part of its bulk telephone metadata program” over a five-year period, and to turn the data over to the House and Senate judiciary committees within 90 days.
“This report shall provide, to the greatest extent possible, an estimate of the number of records of United States citizens that have been acquired by NSA as part of the bulk telephone metadata program and the number of such records that have been reviewed by NSA personnel in response to a query,” it demands.
It is also calls for more information on the vexed question of how helpful such metadata has been in foiling terror plots, something that both NSA critics and Obama's own review panel say has been greatly exaggerated.

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House Passes Budget Easing $63 Billion in Spending Cuts

By Bloomberg Dec 12, 2013 5:27 PM CT  

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, left, and Senator Patty Murray, 

The U.S. House passed the first bipartisan federal budget in four years, which would ease $63 billion in automatic spending cuts and avert another government shutdown. The legislation now heads to the Senate.

The House voted 332-94 today for the $1.01 trillion compromise budget crafted by Senator Patty Murray and Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of a special bipartisan panel. President Barack Obama said he’ll sign the final measure.

The agreement’s main accomplishments are to ease automatic spending cuts that neither party likes by $40 billion in 2014 and about $20 billion in 2015 and cushion the military from a $19 billion reduction starting next month. The accord doesn’t include changes to taxes or spending on entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

“It’s progress,” House Speaker John Boehner said in a floor speech before the vote. “It’s doing what the American people expect us to do,” which is to “stick to our principles but find common ground.”

The budget deal replaces about half of the automatic cuts to defense and non-defense discretionary spending in 2014 and 25 percent of the reductions in 2015, which means most of the automatic cuts enacted in 2011 still take effect. It includes $23 billion in deficit reduction.

“This agreement is better than the alternative, but it misses a huge opportunity to do what the American people expect us to do, and that is to put this country on a fiscally sustainable path,” said Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking House Democrat.

Doctors Spared

The accord also spared doctors for three months from cuts in the Medicare payment rates set to start in January. The measure doesn’t extend emergency benefits for 1.3 million unemployed workers, an omission that frustrated Democrats, who say they plan to continue the fight when Congress returns in January from a holiday break.

The deal won bipartisan support because it doesn’t touch entitlement programs Democrats have pledged to protect or the corporate tax breaks Republicans favor.

It also doesn’t raise the U.S. debt ceiling, setting up a potential fiscal showdown after borrowing authority lapses as soon as February.

Lawmakers and some economists said adopting a formal budget will provide some certainty to the U.S. economy after three years of spending feuds that led to a government shutdown, rattled investors and prompted a downgrade in the nation’s credit rating.

Beth Ann Bovino, chief U.S. economist for Standard & Poor’s Corp., said in a recent newsletter that adoption of a bipartisan budget will be a boon to the U.S. economy.

Uncertainty Reduced

“The budget would reduce a key risk, political uncertainty,” she wrote. “The private sector will probably be more confident when planning investment and spending for next year, which would directly boost growth.”

The deal is far from the $1 trillion to $4 trillion grand bargain on taxes and spending that previous budget negotiators sought. The plan would set U.S. spending at about $1.01 trillion for this fiscal year, higher than the $967 billion required in a 2011 budget plan.

Much of the deficit reduction will come in later years, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The plan would lower the deficit by $3.1 billion in 2014 and $3.4 billion in 2015 and exceed $20 billion a year in 2022 and 2023, the CBO said.

Medicare Payments

A big portion of the savings is tied to extending the cuts in Medicare provider payments into 2022 and 2023, rather than letting them expire in 2021 as under current law.

The accord may help lawmakers repair their image after a 16-day government shutdown in October that caused congressional approval ratings to fall to the lowest level recorded by the Gallup Organization polling group.

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• The Hill

December 12, 2013, 06:26 pm

House approves budget deal, handing major victory to Boehner

By Erik Wasson and Russell Berman

The House on Thursday approved a two-year budget deal that turns off $63 billion in sequester spending cuts, handing a major victory to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio.).
Large majorities in both parties backed the bill in a 332-94 vote.
Only 62 Republicans defected despite harsh criticism of the deal by conservative groups that said it did too little to cut spending, compared to 169 Republicans who backed it. The Democratic vote was 163-32.
Heritage Action, the Club for Growth and other groups said they would negatively score votes in favor of the legislation, but those threats failed to create a stampede against the bill.
Instead, members rallied around Boehner, who had strongly pushed back at the criticism from the outside groups, who he charged had “lost all credibility.”
During the debate, he said the does everything conservatives want.
“If you're for reducing the budget deficit, then you should be voting for this bill,” Boehner said. “If you're for cutting the size of government, you should you be supporting this budget.
“If you're for preventing tax increases, you should be voting for this budget. If you're for entitlement reform, you ought to be voting for this budget. These are the things I came here to do, and this budget does them,” he said.
Boehner was aided by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who negotiated the budget deal with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
While the 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate also came under fire from the right, Ryan’s credentials with conservatives helped GOP leaders win votes.
While the deal did not represent the “grand bargain” of entitlement reforms and tax hikes Boehner and President Obama flirted with in 2011, Ryan argued it represented a victory for conservatives since it will reduce deficits by $23 billion over 10 years.
The bill cuts the deficit, avoids tax hikes, and makes permanent reforms to save money, such as stopping welfare checks to criminals, Ryan said.
He also said it reflected the reality of divided government in Washington, where Republicans hold only the House, and that it would prevent another government shutdown.
Near the end of the debate, Ryan noted that as the GOP's vice presidential candidate in 2012, he was part of the GOP effort to return Republicans to the White House.

“We tried defeating this president,” he said. “I wish we would have.”

“Elections have consequences,” Ryan added. “And I fundamentally believe — this is my personal opinion, I know it's a slightly partisan thing to say — to really do what we think needs to be done, we're going to have to win some elections.

“And in the meantime, let's try to make this divided government work.”

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Government to reopen… for now

Image Source  :  Wikimedia . Org
By  Poco a poco
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New York Post

By Associated Press

October 16, 2013 | 12:38pm

WASHINGTON — Senate leaders announced last-minute agreement Wednesday to avert a threatened Treasury default and reopen the government after a partial, 16-day shutdown. Congress raced to pass the measure by day’s end.
The Dow Jones industrial average soared on the news that the threat of default was fading, flirting with a 200-point gain in morning trading.
“This is a time for reconciliation,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of the agreement he had forged with the GOP leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
McConnell said that with the accord, Republicans had sealed a deal to have spending in one area of the budget decline for two years in a row, adding, “we’re not going back.”
One prominent tea party lawmaker, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, said he would oppose the plan, but not seek to delay its passage.
That was a key concession that signaled a strong possibility that both houses could act by day’s end. That, in turn, would allow President Barack Obama to sign the bill into law ahead of the Thursday deadline that Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew had set for action to raise the $16.7 trillion debt limit.
Officials said the proposal called for the Treasury to have authority to continue borrowing through Feb. 7, and the government would reopen through Jan. 15.
There was no official comment from the White House, although congressional officials said administration aides had been kept fully informed of the negotiations.
In political terms, the final agreement was almost entirely along lines Obama had set when the impasse began last month. Tea party conservatives had initially demanded the defunding of the health care law as the price for providing essential federal funding.
Under a strategy set by Obama and Reid, Democrats said they would not negotiate with Republicans in exchange for performing what the White House called basic functions of keeping the government in operation and preventing Treasury from defaulting on its obligations.
A long line of polls charted a steep decline in public approval for Republicans in the course of what Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., pronounced a “shameful episode” in the nation’s history.
While the emerging deal could well meet resistance from conservatives in the Republican-controlled House, the Democratic Leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, has signaled she will support the plan and her rank and file is expected to vote for it in overwhelming numbers.


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Will Boehner break the “Hastert Rule” today? The Hastert Rule explained

By Lynn Sweet | Get In Touch: @lynnsweet | lsweet@suntimes.com Sweet - October 16, 2013 9:19 am


WASHINGTON–In a 2003 speech, then Speaker Denny Hastert (R-Ill.) discussed his House management guidelines that became known as “The Hastert Rule.” The rule calls for a leader not to send legislation to the House floor for a vote unless it has the support of the majority of the majority. On Wednesday, with just hours left to raise the debt ceiling or risk default, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)–who has been holding fast to the Hastert Rule–has to decide whether to break it.
My column on the role the Hastert Rule played in the runup to the partial government shutdown–Wednesday is Day 16–is HERE. Read the 2003 Hastert speech HERE.
Excerpt: Here is the Hastert Rule background and math:
At present, there are 232 Republicans and 200 Democrats, with three vacancies. If the House Democrats stick together — and so far they have — they would just have to pick off a handful of House Republicans.
While there are not many moderate Republicans — and they are drowned out by their Tea Party colleagues — there are enough to get to 217 votes to pass a bill.
But if Boehner went that route, he would violate the informal “Hastert Rule,” which calls for any legislation first mustering the support of the majority of the majority. The reality is that any measure with provisions to win the backing of 116 House Republicans will not be supported by House Democrats.


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The Washington Post
Shutdown Live Updates

Boehner concedes 'we just didn't win'

In an interview on a local radio station, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) conceded that Republicans “didn’t win” the current budget debate.
“We’ve been locked into a fight over here, trying to bring government down to size, trying to do our best to stop Obamacare,” Boehner said. “We fought the good fight; we just didn’t win.”
Boehner also said he would “absolutely” allow a vote on the Senate plan even if a majority of House Republicans don’t support the bill.
“There’s no reason for our members to vote ‘no’ today,” Boehner told conservative radio host Bill Cunningham, adding that he expected the government to open again Thursday.


Listen to the  Interview Here


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McConnell's primary foe bashes his 'surrender'

Not surprising, but worth noting: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) primary opponent, businessman Matt Bevin, is out with a statement denouncing the deal McConnell helped craft
Here’s part of Bevin’s statement:

“McConnell just negotiated the GOP surrender to Harry Reid, leading the charge to give President Obama a blank check and lifting the debt ceiling once again without any spending reforms. Harry Reid has even praised McConnell for his ‘cooperation.’
“After falsely promising that he would fight to eliminate Obamacare ‘root and branch,’ Sen. McConnell has instead given us more spending, more borrowing, and the Obamacare train wreck with exceptions for liberal pet interests.”

Bevin’s primary challenge — which is likely to be well-funded thanks to Bevin’s personal wealth — has long hung over McConnell’s negotiations in the current budget debate. Expect Bevin to keep up this line of attack in the months ahead, as he seeks to be a formidable opponent to McConnell.


See  More  Updates Here

 

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Boehner urges House GOP to support Senate deal

Shutdown deal announced on Senate floor

By Tom Cohen, CNN

Washington (CNN) -- Senate leaders on Wednesday announced a deal to end the partial government shutdown and avoid a possible U.S. default, and House Speaker John Boehner urged fellow Republicans to support it while a key GOP conservative said he wouldn't try to block it in the Senate.

"We fought the good fight; we just didn't win," Boehner told a radio station in his home state of Ohio in reference to GOP efforts to dismantle or defund President Barack Obama's signature health care reforms and extract deficit reduction concessions around the need to fund the government and raise the federal borrowing limit.

The Democratic-led Senate was expected to pass the agreement in a vote expected to take place by 7 p.m. ET on Wednesday night, followed within hours by a vote in the Republican-led House.

Both chambers will have to take special steps to get the legislation passed that quickly, raising concerns that tea party conservatives led by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas would block or delay it in a final effort to include provisions intended to harm Obama's signature health care reforms.

However, Cruz told reporters that he wouldn't mount a filibuster or employ other procedural moves against the agreement. At the same time, he criticized his Senate colleagues for what he called their failure to listen to the American people and said the fight against Obamacare will continue.

National polls conducted since the start of the shutdown on October 1 indicate that while all sides are feeling the public's anger over the partisan political impasse, Republicans are getting blamed more than than Democrats or Obama.

Boehner and other House Republican leaders told their caucus they would vote for the agreement at an afternoon meeting that participants said ended with a standing ovation for the embattled speaker.

"Blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by the members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us," Boehner said in a statement. "Our drive to stop the train wreck that is the president's health care law will continue."

News of the deal brought some relief to Wall Street as well as Washington, where the shutdown reached a 16th day with the government poised to lose its ability to borrow more money to pay bills after Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hailed the agreement he worked out with his GOP counterpart Mitch McConnell as "historic," saying that "in the end, political adversaries put aside their differences."

Obama praised Senate leaders for reaching a compromise, and urged Congress to act quickly, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

"As soon as possible is essentially the recommendation we have from here," he said.

U.S. stocks rose on the news of an agreement, with the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average jumping more than 200 points on the day.

Short-term plan

Reid said the Senate deal under discussion would reopen the government by funding it until January 15. It also would raise the debt limit until February 7 to avert a possible default on U.S. debt obligations for the first time.

It includes a provision to provide back pay to furloughed federal workers, leadership and congressional sources told CNN.

In addition, the White House supports a provision in the deal that strengthens verification measures for people getting subsidies under Obamacare, spokesman Jay Carney said.

Carney called the change "a modest adjustment," and said it didn't amount to "ransom" for raising the federal debt ceiling because both sides agreed to it and the White House supported it.

The Senate agreement also would set up budget negotiations between the House and Senate for a long-term spending plan.

McConnell fired an opening salvo for those talks, expected to begin soon and continue until December, when he said any ensuing budget deal should adhere to spending caps set in a 2011 law that included forced cuts known as sequestration.

"Preserving this law is critically important to the future of our country," McConnell said of the Budget Control Act, which resulted from the previous debt ceiling crisis in Washington.

The focus on an agreement shifted to the Senate after House Republicans failed on Tuesday to come up with a plan their majority could support, stymied again by demands from tea party conservatives for outcomes unacceptable to Obama and Senate Democrats, as well as some fellow Republicans.

Cruz, despite being in the Senate, is credited with spearheading the House Republican effort to attach amendments that would dismantle or defund the health care reforms known as Obamacare to previous proposals intended to end the shutdown.

All were rejected by the Democratic-led Senate, and Obama also pledged to veto them, meaning there was no chance they ever would have succeeded.

Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire called the House GOP tactic of tying Obamacare to the shutdown legislation "an ill-conceived strategy from the beginning, not a winning strategy."

However, Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa advocated continued brinksmanship to try to change Obamacare, which conservatives detest as a big-government overreach.

"If we're not willing to take a stand now, then when will we take this stand?" he told CNN's "New Day," adding that if "the conservative Republican plan had been implemented five years ago, say at the inception of what is now the Obama presidency, we would have far less debt and deficit."

Read More Here

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Speaker John Boehner told House Republicans Saturday morning that his efforts to strike a deal with President Barack Obama are at a standstill.

 

Senate stalls bi-partisan debt ceiling deal to end government shutdown

Published time: October 12, 2013 19:02

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada (2nd L) prepares to make a statement with US senators Chuck Schumer (L), D-New York, Patty Murray (2nd-R), D-Washington and Dick Durbin, D-Illinios, during a press conference on Capitol Hill about the debt ceiling in Washington, DC, October 12, 2013. (AFP Photo / Jim Watson)

With only five days left to a possible default, there is yet no unity in the US senate with Republicans and Democrats rejecting each other’s proposal to end the 12-day-old government shutdown.

On Saturday the focus of efforts to end the shutdown shifted to the Senate, where the two sides held negotiations in a bid to resolve the stalemate. However, the talks yielded no agreement.
Follow RT's LIVE UPDATES on the US budget crisis
The US Senate Republicans rejected a Democratic plan to raise the debt ceiling through 2014 without making any cuts or changes to Obamacare. Voting 53 against and 45 in favor, Republicans, who want the extension to be accompanied by spending cuts, blocked the bill, which needed at least 60 votes to overcome the objections.

The move was followed by Senate Democratic leaders’ opposition to Republican proposal to end the fiscal stalemate.

Rejecting an offer by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, to end the budget impasse, Democrats argued that her offer asks for too much in return for too little, the POLITICO cited senators and aides.

The so-called Collins plan, which has bipartisan support, offered a six-month extension of government funding and an increase in the government's borrowing limit through January. It was also calling for a two-year delay on Obamacare's medical device tax as well requiring income verification for Americans seeking subsidies for President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Democrats say a new medical device tax that would raise $30 billion over 10 years for the President's healthcare law.

Read More Here

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POLITICO

Focus on Senate after Obama rejects House plan

Play Slideshow

 

 

By JAKE SHERMAN, JOHN BRESNAHAN and BURGESS EVERETT | 10/12/13 9:10 AM EDT Updated: 10/12/13 2:40 PM EDT

 

 

Speaker John Boehner told House Republicans Saturday morning that his efforts to strike a deal with President Barack Obama are at a standstill.
There is no agreement, Boehner said in a room in the Capitol Saturday, and there are no negotiations between House Republicans and the White House, since Obama rejected the speaker’s effort to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks and reopen government while setting up a budget negotiating process.

With that, a familiar dynamic has resurfaced 12 days into the government shutdown and five days before Treasury says the nation runs out of borrowing authority: The pendulum has swung back to Senate Republicans, who now look more likely to cut a deal with Obama to end the first government shutdown since 1996, and avoid the first default on U.S. debt in history.

(Also on POLITICO: Democrats reject Susan Collins proposal)
After the news that talks between Boehner and Obama have broken down, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) emerged on the floor to emphasize that the nation’s eyes are firmly fixed on the chamber.
“I was happy to see the Republicans engaged in talks with the president, the House Republicans. That’s over with. It’s done. They’re not talking anymore,” Reid said. “I say to my friends on the Republican side of this Senate, time is running out.”
House Republicans are, for the first time, acknowledging that reality. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told the closed meeting of GOP lawmakers that, “Senate Republicans need to stand strong and fight,” according to sources in the room.

Read More Here

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