Live Updates From Day 2 of the Shutdown
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Day one of the shutdown came and went Tuesday with little if anything
to suggest that Congress is any closer to passing legislation to turn
the government lights back on. The House GOP's new piecemeal funding
strategy failed to gain traction, a group of war veterans stormed the shuttered WWII monument, and President Obama and John Boehner did their best to assign blame
for the current state of play to the other side. In short, it was the
latest surreal day in a string of them in the nation's capital.
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.
—A small sampling of Slate's coverage—
- Interactive: How Long Will the Shutdown Last?
- Frame Game: Will Obama’s Attack on the “Republican Shutdown” Splinter the GOP?
- Moneybox: GOP Gave Obamacare An IT Bailout
- Weigel: The GOP Rediscovers Compromise—as a Way to Shame Democrats
- Moneybox: Fox Pundit Says Obamacare Shouldn't Be Offered in Foreign Languages
- Moneybox: Markets Are Up Because The Shutdown Is Good News On The Debt Ceiling
4:35 p.m.: Reid Writes Letter to Boehner, via The Hill:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) offered to open negotiations on tax reform Wednesday if Republicans agree to a clean resolution to reopen the government.Reid sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) pledging to appoint negotiators to a budget conference if House Republicans relent on a six-week funding stopgap.
The budget conference is something Democrats have long sought, however, and the proposal was quickly shot down by Boehner’s office.
Reid offered to include tax reform, which has bogged down in partisan politics this year, on the agenda. The letter suggested that Democrats would be willing to negotiate changes to ObamaCare as part of budget talks as well.
The number of House Republicans who are unhappy with the party’s strategy that has resulted in a government shutdown is small, but it is growing and nearing the point that would give Democrats enough votes to pass a bill — if the GOP allowed a vote.
So far, 14 Republican members of the House have publicly stated their willingness to vote for a clean CR – a continuing resolution to fund the government without any conditions attached. ... If every House Democrat were to vote for a clean CR, then only 17 Republican votes would be needed for such a measure to pass. But that would still require Republican leaders, who control the House, to allow such a measure to come for a vote.
The reality is that both sides are leaning heavily on principle when it comes to defending their current stance on the shutdown. For Boehner, this is about standing up for the people who don’t like Obamacare and want it gone. For Obama/Reid, it’s about not re-litigating a law that the Supreme Court upheld and, they believe, the 2012 election affirmed.
And, you don’t cave on principle in 24 or 48 hours. The only way you do move off of a principled stand in politics is for a damn good reason — as in a deal that you can sell to your side as going far enough to make it worth compromising. The two sides are nowhere close to that at the moment. And it’s hard to see them getting to such a “principled” compromise any time all that soon.
A White House official says President Barack Obama has invited congressional leaders to the White House Wednesday for a meeting on the government shutdown.
The official says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have been invited to the meeting. The official says Obama will urge the House to pass a spending bill to allow the government to reopen.
With the House set to vote on five smaller, individual continuing resolutions, the White House has again issued veto threats, saying it will accept nothing besides a “clean” continuing resolution that funds the entire government.
“If the President were presented with H.J. Res. 70, H.J. Res. 71, H.J. Res. 72, H.J. Res. 73, and H.R. 3230, he would veto the bills,” the White House’s Office of Management and Budget says.
Today, the House Rules Committee is considering five funding bills to fund parts of the government. Those bills fund national parks, the District of Columbia, veterans affairs, medical research, and guard and reserve pay.
The approach is interesting because just yesterday, House Republicans tried to force Democrats into a difficult position by holding votes on three of the funding bills under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority to pass. Those bills failed, and thus the House GOP failed to move bills that a majority of its members favored. ... Reid said late Tuesday that the Senate would reject the House's piecemeal approach.
10:03 a.m.: The Tea Party Says It's Winning (Despite What the Polls Say), via the New York Times:
"We’ve passed the witching hour of midnight, and the sky didn’t fall, nothing caved in,” said Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa.... "Now the pressure will build on both sides, and the American people will weigh in."
Mr. King is part of a hard-core group of about two dozen or so of the most conservative House members who stand in the way of a middle path for Mr. Boehner that could keep most of his party unified while pressuring the Senate to compromise. ... Their strategy is to yield no ground until they are able to pass legislation reining in the health care law; if the federal government stays closed, so be it. And they believe they are winning.
"It’s getting better for us," said Representative Raúl R. Labrador, Republican of Idaho. "The moment where Republicans are least popular is right when the government shuts down. But when the president continues to say he’s unwilling to negotiate with the American people, when Harry Reid says he won’t even take things to conference, I don’t think the American people are going to take that too kindly."
9:45 a.m.: The Collision Course We All Fear, via Politico:
Hours after federal agencies shuttered their doors for the first time in nearly two decades, congressional leaders from both parties began to prepare for a protracted budget battle bound to grow more difficult the longer it goes unresolved. Indeed, if the standoff continues to creep toward the Oct. 17 deadline to raise the $16.7 trillion national debt ceiling, the two issues will become intertwined - and potentially intractable. House Republican leaders and top Senate Democrats privately began discussing this increasingly likely possibility Tuesday, but the two sides have yet to engage in any direct negotiations in the acrimonious budget dispute. ...
Within the next few days, if House Republicans don't accept a Senate plan to open the government until mid-November, Reid is highly unlikely to accept a budget deal if it does not increase the debt ceiling, Democratic sources said Tuesday. If the House GOP won't back the Senate's stopgap plan by later this week, Democrats are prepared to argue that it makes little sense to agree to a short-term spending bill if Congress is forced to resolve another fiscal crisis in just a matter of days. A White House official said Tuesday night that the president could get behind Reid's strategy. Across the Capitol, House Republicans were quickly coming to a similar conclusion.
9:32 a.m.: All Eyes on the Moderates, via the Los Angeles Times:
A striking degree of Democratic unity has confounded Republican strategies so far. In the Senate, Democrats have remained outwardly unworried about a Republican tack targeting their most politically vulnerable colleagues. ... Those senators all have stood with their party during the current budget impasse, knowing their earlier votes to pass the healthcare law would be used against them in next year's campaigns regardless of their votes today. ... By contrast, the split among Republicans appears to be widening.
9:20 a.m.: Obama Trims Down Asia Trip, via Reuters:
President Barack Obama on Wednesday scrapped part of a long-planned trip to Asia and left the remainder of the trip in doubt as a U.S. government shutdown went into a second day with no end in sight to the funding battle in Congress that triggered it.
Obama scuttled two stops on a planned four-country tour and left visits to two other countries up in the air, according to White House statements. The president told his counterparts in Malaysia and the Philippines he would not be able to meet them as planned and a White House official said the president is weighing whether to attend diplomatic summits in Indonesia and Brunei.
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