High drama in run-up to Washington budget vote
THE US Senate faces a Sunday showdown over whether to keep government running, as bitter disputes over President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law bring federal agencies dangerously close to a shutdown.
A fractured Congress is struggling to approve a stopgap spending bill that keeps government doors open after the current fiscal year ends next Monday.
The Republican-led House of Representatives last week passed a contentious measure that funds government operations at current levels through to December 15, but which also strips the three-year-old healthcare law, known as “Obamacare”, of all its funding.
Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, vowed to thwart continuing Republican efforts to do the same in his chamber, saying this week “the Senate will not pass any bill that defunds or delays Obamacare”. He set up an initial procedural vote for midday yesterday, and both parties acknowledged that the measure needed 60 votes in the 100-member body.
Mr Reid said he would then strip out the Obamacare language, and amend the budget bill to fund government only until November 15 instead of mid-December. That would push Congress to quickly work out a long-term budget deal instead of extending the fiscal crisis right up to the end-of-year holiday period.
Should Mr Reid’s Senate schedule prevail, “we’d finish sometime on Sunday”, he said. That would leave the House under 48 hours to either pass the amended bill or send a reworked counter-offer back to the Senate. Government agencies would begin shutting their doors early on Tuesday if no spending agreement is reached, and hundreds of thousands of federal workers would likely be ordered to stay home with no pay.
The top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, said he hoped to compress the process, leaving the House more time to work its will.
Mr McConnell also stressed that “any one senator can object to any effort to shorten the process”.
That legislator turned out to be freshman senator Ted Cruz, whose nearly 22-hour effort from Tuesday through the night to midday yesterday to block Mr Reid’s strategy was doomed to failure as Mr McConnell and other Republicans peeled away.
Mr Cruz had promised to hold the floor “until I am no longer able to stand”. He ranted against Obamacare, railed against policies and, at one point, read from Dr Seuss’s book, Green Eggs and Ham.
“We don’t need fake fights, we don’t need fake votes. We need real change,” the conservative Mr Cruz told an nearly empty hall near midnight, blasting the “rigged process” that kept Obamacare funded.
Mr Cruz ceded the podium only long enough for questions, mainly from fellow Republican Mike Lee. As dawn approached yesterday, senator Marco Rubio, also a Tea Party conservative, took the lectern, giving Mr Cruz a break, which the Texas legislator used to stretch with knee bends on the Senate’s floor.
Mr Cruz did, however, succeed in raising his profile in Congress.
US mid-term elections will be held in November next year, and the fight over Obamacare is set to figure prominently in Republican efforts to win back the Senate and extend its control of the House.
Republicans have suggested they will seek to use the next fiscal hurdle — the need to raise the debt ceiling — to negotiate a delay to the health law’s implementation.
The US Treasury may hit its legal borrowing limit of $16.7-trillion by the middle of next month.