As the nation inches closer to its first government shutdown in more than 17 years, there have been few signs that the GOP-controlled House and the Democratic-led Senate will be able to strike an eleventh-hour deal to keep the government running. Still, the looming shutdown doesn’t become an official shutdown until midnight, and even then lawmakers could in theory strike a thirteenth-hour compromise that returns things to normal before would-be furloughed government workers wake up for their morning commute Tuesday. Still, no one’s holding their breath.
John Dickerson, Dave Weigel, Matt Yglesias, and the rest of Slate will continue to bring you in-depth analysis from Washington. But below you’ll find a running list of the latest smaller developments, rumors, links and theories floating around inside the Beltway and out of it:
12:01 a.m.: OMB Orders Federal Agencies to Shutdown, via Washington Post:
11:02 p.m.: Not So Fast, GOP House Leaders Giving It One More Shot, Says House GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor:
10:40 p.m.: House Republicans Will Not Try To Pass Another Bill, Triggering Shutdown, via Washington Post:
House Republicans decided they would not attempt to pass any more bills late Monday to fund the government, setting in motion the first shutdown of federal agencies since 1996, according to two senior GOP advisers. The shutdown will begin early Tuesday.
10:10 p.m.: McCain Would Support “Clean” CR, via Yahoo! News:
9:45 p.m.: Senate Rejects House’s Latest Bill (54-46), Spotlight Back on House, via Washington Post:
Just after 9:30 p.m., senators voted along party lines, 54-46, to kill a House bill that would delay the individual mandate portion of Obamacare. It was the third effort by the House to get Senate Democrats to budget on Obamacare; each time, the Senate has stood firm, saying it would only accept a so-called “clean” continuing resolution — i.e. one that would continue to fund the government with no other changes.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has asked House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to allow a vote on a so-called “clean” continuing resolution with no Obamacare provisions. But Boehner has so far resisted that pressure, and allowing such a vote would invite a revolt among the cast-iron conservatives in the House.
8:55 p.m.: Latest House CR Could Be a Final Offer, More on That Offer, via New York Times:
With the 228-201 vote, the House effectively made its last offer before a government shutdown at midnight. The bill demands a one-year delay in the health care law’s requirement that individuals buy health insurance and denies federal subsidies to members of Congress, Capitol Hill staff, executive branch appointees, White House staff, the president and the vice president, who would be forced to purchase their health insurance on the Affordable Care Act’s new insurance exchanges.
Senate Democratic leaders announced they would immediately take up the spending bill, strip out the health care language and send it back to the House free of policy prescriptions. And with that, time would likely be out and large portions of the government will shut down.
8:45 p.m.: House Passes Resolution, via Washington Post:
The House has passed a continuing resolution delaying the individual mandate.
The bill lost the support of about a dozen House Republicans but got several Democrats to support it.
It passed 228-201.
7:30 p.m.: House Passes Procedural Vote, via HuffPo:
House Speaker John Boehner’s latest proposal to fund the government would chip away at Obamacare by delaying the individual mandate and barring the federal government from contributing to the health insurance of the president, lawmakers and staffers.
It nearly collapsed over a procedural vote after moderate Republicans and far-right members of the GOP both complained about the bill, but Boehner (R-Ohio) was able to keep most of his caucus in line, passing the “rule” to consider the measure 225 to 204. Six Republicans opposed the rule.
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Boehner still must pass his underlying bill, and the vote was expected around 9 p.m.
7:10 p.m.: Obama Speaks to Boehner, via ABC News:
5:35 p.m.: Obama tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep “I shouldn’t have to offer anything,” via NPR:
Steve [Inskeep] asked if that opportunity to avoid a shutdown exists, what was he willing to offer.
“Steve when you say what can I offer? I shouldn’t have to offer anything,” Obama said. “They’re not doing me a favor by paying for things that they have already approved for the government to do. That’s part of their basic function of government; that’s not doing me a favor. That’s doing what the American people sent them here to do, carrying out their responsibilities.
“I have said consistently that I’m always happy to talk to Republicans and Democrats about how we shape a budget that is investing in things like early childhood education, rebuilding our roads and bridges and putting people back to work, growing our economy making sure that we have the research and development to stay at the cutting edge and that deals with some of our long-term debt issues. But we’re not going to accomplish those things if one party to this conversation says that the only way that they come to the table is if they get 100 percent of what they want and if they don’t, they threaten to burn down the house.”
5:15 p.m.: Obama Talks Shutdown Specifics, via HuffPo:
President Barack Obama spoke from the White House Monday on the looming government shutdown. “If the Congress does not fulfill its responsibility to pass a budget today, most of the government will shut down tomorrow,” Obama said.
Obama gave a rundown of how a government shutdown would affect Americans. He noted that “NASA will shut down almost entirely” though Mission Control will remain active; national parks and monuments will close; and veterans will find support centers unstaffed….
“The idea of putting people’s hard-earned progress at risk is the height of irresponsibility, and it does not have to happen,” Obama said. Obama said a shutdown “is entirely preventable” if the House acts as the Senate already has. Obama also directly addressed those who think using Obamacare as a bargaining chip in budget negotiations will keep the health care law from being implemented. “You can’t shut it down,” Obama said of the health care law.
4:02 p.m.: Pre-Shutdown Housekeeping, via Reuters:
The Senate passed by unanimous consent a bill passed Sunday morning by the House to pay the military in the event of a government shutdown.
3:33 p.m.: The House’s New Plan Ends the Same Way As Its Old One, via Politico:
House Republicans are moving toward putting a bill on the floor that would delay the individual mandate and cancel health-insurance subsidies for members of Congress, the president and administration appointees, according to multiple sources. That bill would be part of a government funding measure to which the Senate would have to agree. The Senate just rejected the House’s last move this weekend to delay Obamacare and repeal the medical device tax as part of a government funding bill. The government shuts down at midnight and this move would all but ensure that occurs.
2:27 p.m.: Senate, Again, Sends Clean CR Back to the House, via the Slatest:
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The Senate voted this afternoon to strip the House GOP-authored provisions in the continuing resolution currently stalled on Capitol Hill and to send a clean bill back to the lower chamber, which yet again finds itself holding the political hot potato as Washington inches closer still to its first shutdown in more than 17 years.
2:05 p.m.: Senate Dems Have No Interest in One-Week Fix, via HuffPo:
For starters, it’s unclear whether House Republicans would agree to the measure, since it wouldn’t touch Obamacare. And early signs from party leadership indicated that they would explore alternate routes…. Beyond Republicans’ response is the fact that Senate Democrats don’t seem to have all that much interest in prolonging an issue that – for them at least – has only one logical outcome.
“It is a non-starter,” emailed one top Senate Democratic aide. “THE CURRENT BILL IS ONLY 6 WEEKS TO BEGIN WITH!! A week wouldn’t change anything, it would just give Republicans more time to send over junk bills and have rah-rah votes. There are no serious negotiations so there is nothing to buy time for.”
1:40 p.m.: Senate GOP Hopes to Find a (Very) Temporary Solution, via Politico:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republican Conference are gauging whether there is enough support to pass a one-week stop-gap measure to prevent the government from shutting down at midnight, according to a notice sent to Senate offices, which was obtained by POLITICO. If there is enough support, the measure could allow more time for the House and Senate to work out their differences on a longer-term continuing resolution. It is one of several options the Republican leadership is pursuing, sources say.
1:35 p.m.: Obama Says There’s Still Hope, via NBC News
President Barack Obama said he is “not at all resigned” to a federal government shutdown at the end of Monday as Congress shows little signs of reaching any agreement to continue funding into October. … Speaking Monday afternoon at the White House, Obama said he hadn’t resigned himself to a shutdown at midnight as a result of the stalemate. He said he anticipated conversing with leaders in Congress in both parties throughout the day, and into the week.
“The bottom line is that the Senate has passed a bill that keeps the government open, does not have a lot of extraneous issues to it, that allows us then to negotiate a longer-term budget and address a range of other issues,” he said following a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “but ensures we’re not shutting down the government and we’re not shutting down the economy at a time when a lot of families out there are just getting some traction and digging themselves out of the hole that we’ve had as a consequence of the financial crisis.”
Read the rest of Slate’s coverage of the government shutdown.
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