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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Editorial
The GOP's shutdown sham
Republicans are holding the government hostage in their battle against healthcare reform.
Los Angeles Times Editorial board
October 1, 2013
House Republicans' irresponsible brinkmanship may finally lead to the government shutdown that some of its members have been coveting since they took control of that chamber in 2011. This time, though, the fight hasn't been a battle over spending on federal agencies. It's been a symbolic one over the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. And it's been a sham.
The inconvenient truth for the GOP is that "defunding Obamacare," as the House tried to do, wouldn't stop most of the major provisions of the healthcare law, some of which have already gone into effect. That's because the new insurance rules, premium subsidies and many other features of the law don't rely on discretionary dollars; they're on fiscal autopilot.
The Senate rejected the defunding proposal, yet House Republicans keep sending over versions of the stopgap spending bill that try to undermine healthcare reform. Their supporters say they're just trying to negotiate improvements in the law, but that's disingenuous. The House GOP proposals would raise the deficit and potentially send premiums skyrocketing for individual policies, hurting the constituents most in need of that coverage.
Not surprisingly, Republicans have sought to blame the impending shutdown on Democrats, who have resisted the GOP's healthcare demands. But Senate Democrats have already conceded to the House on the funding bill's key fiscal dispute, namely, how much federal agencies can spend in the coming weeks. That concession would cut billions of dollars from the projected deficit. The hard-liners in the House GOP simply refuse to declare victory and move on; instead they're determined to keep fighting over Obamacare, without regard for the consequences.
The shutdown that loomed Tuesday, although partial, would still leave Americans without numerous protections and benefits that they rely on, including admissions into clinical trials, the processing of visa applications and the approval of new mortgage and small-business loan guarantees. While the Pentagon's payroll wouldn't be disrupted, other "essential" safety and health employees would stay on the job without paychecks until the impasse was resolved.
Unlike the GOP's previous flirtations with a government shutdown, this fight isn't being waged in the name of lower deficits and debt. It's just a desperate attempt to score political points against the Affordable Care Act before it goes fully into effect and the benefits become clearer. As House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) said over the weekend, "It's unfortunate that yet again we are in this situation facing another shutdown showdown with no solution to our many fiscal problems in sight." He can thank his colleagues in the House GOP for that.
Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times
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Tue Oct 01, 2013 10:22 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Washington Post
Chris Cillizza-The Fix
Peter King and the ’40 Ted Cruz Republicans’
By Jason Horowitz, Published: October 1 at 9:41 am
For a fleeting moment Monday evening, it seemed that Rep. Peter King, the gruff, tough-talking, blue-collar Long Islander was poised to emerge as the GOP’s anti-Cruz, a moderate who would lead a rebellion against the House GOP effort to tie defunding Obamacare to funding the government.
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It was, as mentioned, a fleeting moment.
“I was the only one who spoke strongly in opposition. Silence,” King said in an interview a few minutes before it became clear that his rebellion would fail and the government would shut down. He said that he told his colleagues in a private caucus meeting that they were “living in their own echo chamber, hearing themselves and talking to each other.” Barely any of them heard him.
“Today was the only opportunity we had to break the logjam, putting it out there that we were going to start this revolt if you will, trying to line up votes,” King said. He said he had overheard Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on the House floor lobbying his conference and “asking people on a personal basis to stick with him.” King said that he personally listened to Boehner tell him “‘I understand your frustration, I know this is tough for everyone, but if you guys will stick with me it will work out OK, I’ve got a plan.’” King added that he believed Boehner was being sincere. “I don’t see any deception here, I just don’t think it’s going to happen.”
As of midnight, it didn’t.
“By all accounts,” King added. “You have 40 Ted Cruz Republicans in the House running national policy.”
King has over the years become increasingly comfortable in his role as the moderate thorn in his party’s right side. He once said Newt Gingrich, who last shut down the government, was turning the GOP into “hillbillies at revival meetings.” This year he went ballistic when his party voted to cut funding for relief to damage caused by Hurricane Sandy and said he didn’t feel “comfortable” in a caucus he described as populated by anti-urban bigots and untrustworthy leaders. But it is in Cruz, the smooth talking, Ivy League trained Texas senator, that King, whose office is decorated with cop, firefighter and fighting Irish paraphernalia, has found his ultimate foil and the personification of everything that he thinks went wrong with his party.
He said the current strand in his party didn’t have a prayer of winning the presidency back in 2016 – “Not if it’s the party of Ted Cruz . I think a Republican can get elected if he is conservative and independent at the same time. Not if he follows this blind ideology. It’s not even an ideology,” he added. “It’s not even conservative. Defunding the law? If Tip O’Neill said in the 1980s we are going to shut the government down unless Reagan stopped Star Wars or repealed his tax cuts, we would have said ‘It’s left wing Bolshevism.’ So I don’t see it as a conservative policy as much as a guerrilla tactic.”
King, who has an affinity for the media and not unrelated tendency to declare presidential ambitions, represents an increasingly Democratic Long Island district, has voted for gun control measures, defended Charlie Rangel and is a strong supporter of unions. He became simpatico with the Clintons for his help during the Northern Ireland peace accords. But his trademark issues have been those of national security, on which he has been unwaveringly hawkish. A supporter of John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, he earned the ire of liberals for investigations into Islamic extremism as the chair of the Homeland Security Committee. But such complexity, he seemed to think, is a thing of the past in the GOP.
Asked what happened to his party, King said “Wow. I don’t know. The Ted Cruz element.” He paused. “I don’t want to personalize it, because it’s not like he’s so charismatic.” |
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Tue Oct 01, 2013 10:34 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Washington Post
Chris Cillizza- The Fix
John Boehner is right. Sort of. But not really.
By Chris Cillizza, Published: September 30 at 4:47 pmE-mail the writer
Here’s John Boehner defending House passage of a bill over the weekend that linked delaying Obamacare to keeping the federal government open:
“The House has again passed a plan that reflects the American people’s desire to keep the government running and stop the president’s health care law. Repealing the medical device tax will save jobs and delaying the president’s health care law for all Americans is only fair given the exemptions the White House has granted to big businesses and insurance companies. We’ve also voted to ensure that our troops will receive their paychecks no matter what. Now that the House has again acted, it’s up to the Senate to pass this bill without delay to stop a government shutdown.”
Boehner is right. Ish.
Americans don’t want the government to shut down. And, polling has shown for years now that more people disapprove of Obamacare than approve.
But, simply because each of those statements are true on their own does not mean they are true together. And, in fact, polling shows they aren’t.
Take a CNN poll released Monday. Six in ten said that “approving a budget agreement that would avoid a government shutdown” is more important for Congress to do than “preventing major provisions in the new health care law from taking effect by cutting the finds needed to implement them”, which 34 percent said was the most important priority. Or a CBS News/New York Times poll released last week that showed 60 percent of respondents saying the federal budget/debt ceiling should be kept as separate issues from cutting off funding for Obamacare. (Thirty one percent said it should cut off funding for the law.)
As we have written before, the only way we currently see that Obamacare can be turned from a political positive to a political negative for Republicans is by linking it to the funding of the government beyond midnight tonight. People don’t like Obamacare, but they like the idea of tying it to keeping the government open even less.
That, at least as of this writing, is what is happening. Congressional Republicans are adding one plus one and getting three when it comes to the logic behind linking defunding or delaying Obamacare to keeping the government running. And that doesn’t add up politically.
Chris Cillizza
Chris Cillizza is founder and editor of The Fix, a leading blog on state and national politics. He is the author of The Gospel According to the Fix: An Insider’s Guide to a Less than Holy World of Politics and an MSNBC contributor and political analyst. He also regularly appears on NBC and NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show. He joined The Post in 2005 and was named one of the top 50 journalists by Washingtonian in 2009. |
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Tue Oct 01, 2013 10:40 am |
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twotap
F L I N T O I D
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| GOP keeps sending bills to the senate that fully funds the government and only demands that the fiasco known as obamacare be defunded while its being dissected and actually explained. I say screw it let the democrats and obama have this turkey and let it self destruct while reminding the voters in 2014 that the repubs attempted to prevent this bankrupting entitlement. |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Tue Oct 01, 2013 11:04 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Really, Michele Bachmann? That's low, even for you: http://on.msnbc.com/1g0RPeT
Rev Al Sharpton
Bachmann takes the Obamacare debate to a new low — MSNBC
tv.msnbc.com
“I think the reason is because President Obama can’t wait to get Americans addicted to the crack cocaine of dependency on more government health care,” Rep. Michele Bachmann said. |
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Tue Oct 01, 2013 3:35 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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BlogBanner_PoliticsNation_976x100
Bachmann takes the Obamacare debate to a new low
Morgan Whitaker, @morganwinn
2:10 PM on 10/01/2013
The marketplace for Americans to buy health care insurance under Obamacare debuted Tuesday, as Republicans took aim toward President Obama’s health care law with a whole new level of vitriol.
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I think the reason is because President Obama can’t wait to get Americans addicted to the crack cocaine of dependency on more government health care,” Rep. Michele Bachmann said to World Net Daily. “Because, once they enroll millions of more individual Americans it will be virtually impossible for for us to pull these benefits back from people.”
“People are looking at getting, I’m not kidding, $18,000 a year worth of benefits,” she added later. “You buy a lot of love for $18,000 a year, and you know you are also going to be getting illegal aliens who are going to be getting access to these benefits. You know it.”
Believe it or not, Bachmann is not the first person to drop the word “crack” during an attack on the health reform law.
During a conversation about the exchanges opening Tuesday, Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly said on his program Friday, “it’s getting them out of the house, or the crack house,” while talking about uninsured Americans signing up for health insurance
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Sen. Ted Cruz has made “addiction” to Obamacare one of the focal points of his opposition to the law.
“What the administration desperately wants is to get to January, to get the exchanges in place, to get the subsidies in place, and by the way, they eliminated any eligibility test, so they want people hooked on Obamacare so it can never be unwound,” he said on Fox back in July.
During his more recent pseudo-filibuster on the Senate floor last week, Cruz all but called the president a drug dealer.
“He wants to get as many Americans as possible addicted to the subsidies, addicted to the sugar because he knows that, in modern times, no major entitlement has been implemented and then unwound,” Cruz said.
But if the addiction rhetoric wasn’t enough, Bachmann also wants to draw connections between Obamacare and the now-defunct community organizing group ACORN.
She told WND that people working on the health care law “will be getting something like $59 a head for the people that they sign up. ACORN did that.”
“ACORN signed up Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse,” she said, “so people could make money. It was meant to be a scam.”
“We know people will get signed up in a fraudulent way,” she added.
State Rep. William O’Brien, a New Hampshire lawmaker, said the law was “as destructive to personal and individual liberty as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 that allowed slave owners to come to New Hampshire and seize African Americans.”
When Obama made fun of those remarks, he insisted that the president was “increasingly diminished.”
“My reaction to it was that the president has remained such a rabble-rouser and community organizer that he doesn’t want to take the time to slow up and understand why people — a majority of people — are so concerned about the effects of Obamacare,” O’Brien told the International Business Times, adding later, “This specific episode — his mocking tone and charged-up rhetoric — demonstrates that he’s not going to be a unifier.” |
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Tue Oct 01, 2013 3:38 pm |
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twotap
F L I N T O I D
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| Quoting Al Tawana Sharpton?? what a joke. But of course Obama wants as many people addicted to the democrat entitlement crap as he can muster. You would have to be a complete moron not to understand that fact. |
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"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Tue Oct 01, 2013 8:13 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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THE WEEK shared a link from Yahoo News
5 bogus Republican arguments to justify a government shutdown
theweek.com
No, Obama is not unwilling to negotiate with the GOP. And no, Harry Reid is not the one who caused a government
5 bogus Republican arguments to justify a government shutdown
Boehner needs to embrace a different tagline.
Bill Scher October 1, 2013 6:33 AM The Week
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The House conservatives who refused to keep the government open without kneecapping ObamaCare seem to believe, now that the government has shut down, they can win the public opinion fight and force Democrats to back down.
But to make the case that their actions and demands were reasonable, Republicans need arguments that are remotely plausible. Instead, they are heading into battle with claims that I would call paper-thin, were that not a grave insult to paper. Here are the five legs on which the Republican position can't stand.
1. Obama won't negotiate
Speaker Boehner embraced this argument in a web video with the tag line, "Why is the Obama administration willing to negotiate with Putin on Syria... but not with Congress to address Washington's spending problem?" That's a disingenuous reading of the situation. Washington is at an impasse because Republicans have repeatedly snubbed Obama's offer for a budget compromise that pairs a stingier Social Security cost-of-living formula with corporate tax increases. Republicans refused to negotiate over taxes. They have continually demanded that Democrats scrap President Obama's biggest legislative achievement in exchange for simply keeping the government operating. Of course Obama won't negotiate over that. Otherwise, Obama has proved quite willing to negotiate on all aspects of the budget. It's Republicans who have refused offer to any concession of any sort.
2. Republicans have already compromised
Sen. Ted Cruz tried this one during his Sunday Meet The Press appearance: "My position in this fight was we should defund [ObamaCare], which is different from repeal. And even now what the House of Representatives has done is a step removed from defunding. It's delaying it. Now that's the essence of a compromise." No, the essence of compromise is when each party gives up something. Republicans aren't proposing to give up anything. They're just demanding a little bit less than before. Meanwhile, Democrats aren't asking for any trophies. Keeping the government open and raising the debt limit aren't ideological prizes, but basic housekeeping.
SEE ALSO: 10 things you need to know today: October 1, 2013
3. Republicans are just demanding what the people want
Republicans are nominally correct in saying that polling shows a lack of majority support for ObamaCare. But you don't have to look much deeper in the data to see that doesn't translate into majority support for threatening government shutdown to defund or delay ObamaCare. Multiple polls show widespread opposition to the Republican strategy linking the funding of government operations to stopping ObamaCare. Sixty-three percent of the electorate says Congress should "provide the funding to keep the government operating and deal with the health care issue separately." Sixty percent say avoiding a shutdown is more important than "cutting the funds" to implement ObamaCare. Four in five people say threatening shutdown is "not an acceptable way to negotiate." Even if you take the threat of shutdown out of the question, the Republican position still polls poorly. Only 38 percent support the view that "funding for the 2010 health care law must be cut off as part of any budget agreement," with 50 percent opposed. Furthermore, the notion of widespread opposition to ObamaCare on conservative grounds is also misplaced. As CNN's polling has long showed, while support for ObamaCare is below 50 percent, about 10 to 15 percent of that opposition says the program is "not liberal enough." Support for the Republican view that ObamaCare is "too liberal" is only in the mid-to-upper 30s.
4. Harry Reid is the one who shut down the government
On Meet the Press, Sen. Cruz claimed: "[Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid's] position is 100 percent of ObamaCare must be funded in all instances, and, other than that, he's going to shut the government down." To translate, Sen. Reid's position is programs that Congress has already established by law should be properly funded. Reid is not the one who brought these issues together. House Republicans are the ones who made the decision to repeatedly link the suffocation of ObamaCare to legislation that would keep the government open; that was the threat, a threat on which Republicans have now followed through.
5. Since Obama is delaying ObamaCare for his friends, he should for everyone else
Also on this Sunday's Meet The Press, GOP Rep. Raul Labrador tried to make the case for a one-year delay of the entire Affordable Care Act program because there have been delays regarding certain provisions: "The president has already delayed it for big businesses. They have delayed it for all his friends … all we're asking for in the House of Representatives is for a one-year delay. Just like the unions are asking for a one-year delay." That doesn't make any sense. If Obama's objective was to go easy on his friends and save them from a bureaucratic disaster, don't you think the unions that supported his re-election would be getting help before the big businesses that didn't?
The real story is that the delay for the mandate on employers with 50 or more workers was to give extra time to resolve a specific issue that arose: a concern that the paperwork was going to be unnecessarily burdensome on the vast majority of businesses that already provide insurance. So a delay was issued to provide the time to resolve that specific matter. Soon after, certain unions tried to use the employer mandate delay, not to get a similar temporary delay, but to permanently change a rule that denies ObamaCare subsidies to a particular kind of employer-based insurance utilized by union members. Obama told his union friends, no, there's no legal basis for giving you those subsidies. The president is not doling out special favors. Nor does he consider the need for a few delays to resolve discrete issues to be cause for junking the entire law. In turn, these unions accepted the president's answer and continue to support ObamaCare. They did not throw a temper tantrum and call for a general strike that would grind the entire economy to a halt. |
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Wed Oct 02, 2013 7:07 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Chris Cillizza
The shutdown isn't ending anytime soon. Here's why. http://ow.ly/ppWJP
he shutdown won’t end anytime soon. Here’s why.
www.washingtonpost.com
If Tuesday told us anything, it's that the two parties are digging in. |
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Wed Oct 02, 2013 7:26 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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The shutdown won’t end anytime soon. Here’s why.
By Chris Cillizza and Sean Sullivan, Published: October 2 at 6:30 am
If Day 1 of the government shutdown told us anything, it’s that this situation isn’t going to resolve itself anytime terribly soon.
The White House is seen at dusk on the eve of a possible government shutdown as Congress battles over the budget in Washington, D.C., Sept.30, 2013. AFP PHOTO / Saul LOEB
The White House is seen at dusk on the eve of a possible government shutdown as Congress battles over the budget in Washington, D.C., Sept.30, 2013. AFP PHOTO / Saul LOEB
President Obama held a press event in which he accused Republicans of pursuing “an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans,” adding: “In other words, they demanded ransom just for doing their job.”
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) wrote in an op-ed in USA Today on Tuesday that “this is part of a larger pattern: the president’s scorched-Earth policy of refusing to negotiate in bipartisan way on his health care law, current government funding, or the debt limit.”
Then there was this from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) late Tuesday: “It is time for Speaker Boehner to stop the games, think about the people he is hurting, and let the House pass the Senate’s bill to re-open the government with Republican and Democratic votes.”
Putting aside the rhetoric, Boehner and Obama have not spoken since a brief conversation Monday evening and Boehner and Reid aren’t speaking either, according to WaPo’s Karen Tumulty and Lori Montgomery.
The clear takeaway? Entrenchment in established positions is the name of the game at the moment. And, you don’t dig in deeper when you are looking for ways to move on.
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. |
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Wed Oct 02, 2013 7:31 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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THINK PROGRESS
National Parks Remain Closed, Yet House Republicans Move To Sell Off 3.3 Million Acres Of Public Lands
By Jessica Goad, Guest Blogger on October 3, 2013 at 9:08 am
Shenandoah-National-Park-2The U.S. government remains shut down, thanks to House Republicans’ refusal to fund the government without defunding the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, 401 national parks across the country are closed to tourists and vacationers, provoking “pretty livid” responses.
But the fact that the government and parks are closed hasn’t stopped Congress from holding hearings, including one Thursday in the House Natural Resources Committee on a bill that would force a fire sale of 3.3 million acres of public lands.
The Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act of 2013 (H.R. 2657) from Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) would mandate that public lands Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming to be sold off to the highest bidder as a way of reducing the deficit. The areas to be sold are based on an outdated report from 1997, although the bill directs the Secretary of the Interior to “update” that report.
However, evidence shows not only that voters oppose selling off public lands, but that they are incredibly important economically. This is especially true for the state of Utah, which is losing $4.4 million every day because its five national parks are shutdown. Tourists and visitors to these parks are being turned away, and reports of the potentially devastating economic impacts are already coming in.
The manager of an lodge outside of Bryce Canyon National Park said “This such an important time for us … It’s going to kill us if this drags on”
Moab retailer Canyon Voyages Adventure Company has gotten “tons and tons of calls from visitors who have scheduled trips with us or aren’t sure if they can go” because Canyonlands and Arches National Parks are closed.
And The Deseret News reports that “Zion [National Park] expects to turn away 10,000 visitors a day during the government-imposed closure, costing $50,000 in daily revenue.”
Some of these disgruntled tourists have gone so far as to go on record blaming Republicans for the shutdown. For example, Mark Boeckman, a visitor to Zion National Park said earlier this week:
I’m a Republican and I am not happy with what they are doing. I’m of the opinion that the far right of the Republican Party has taken this too far. The Obamacare thing is something they voted for… it is what is. Live by it.
With Americans’ frustration growing at the shutdown, House Republicans are trying to distract from their closure of national parks by proposing piecemeal legislation to keep just national parks (but not monuments, refuges, or Forest Service campgrounds) open. They also took the opportunity on Wednesday to vilify the National Park Service for providing safe access for Honor Flight participants to the World War II Memorial, despite the fact that the agency “‘bent over backwards’ to make sure veterans were not inconvenienced or disappointed” according to the co-founder of the Honor Flight Network
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And of course, while national parks are closed to the public, they remain open to oil and gas drilling.
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Thu Oct 03, 2013 2:19 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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No progress in budget impasse as Pentagon orders most workers back and House approves back pay
(J. Scott Applewhite/ Associated Press ) - Lawmakers come and go from the House of Representatives during a vote for back pay for government workers who have been furloughed during the government shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2013. With the partial shutdown entering its fifth day, the GOP-run House passed a bill Saturday that would make sure the furloughed workers get paid for not working. The 407-0 vote in the House was uniquely bipartisan, even as lawmakers continued their partisan rhetoric. The Senate is expected to OK it, too. Still, there has been no sign of progress towards ending an impasse that has idled 800,000 federal workers and curbed services around the country.
By Associated Press, Published: October 5 | Updated: Sunday, October 6, 9:51 AM
WASHINGTON — A large chunk of the furloughed federal work force is headed back to the Pentagon, and those who remain at home or are working without paychecks are a step closer to getting back pay once the partial government shutdown ends.
Still, a resolution to the impasse itself is nowhere in sight.
Zachary A. Goldfarb, Craig Whitlock and Jeff Simon OCT 5
House also passes bill offering full pay for time federal employees are not at work during shutdown.
Angela Moon OCT 4
Concern over a long government shutdown and a looming debt-ceiling debate sends stocks lower.
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House Speaker John Boehner doesn’t see one. Asked Sunday how the standoff ends, he was uncertain: “If I knew, I’d tell you.”
The Ohio Republican added President Barack Obama can call him any time to start negotiations to end the shutdown. “He knows what my phone number is,” Boehner said on ABC.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Sunday that Congress should act immediately to reopen the government because the votes are there to pass a temporary budget measure.
“There are no winners here,” Lew said on NBC. “Every day the government is shut down does real harm to the American people.”
Lew said that members of Congress “need to open the government up. They can do it today.”
The federal government was partially shut down Tuesday, the first day of the new budget year, after Republicans and Democrats couldn’t agree on a plan to continue funding federal agencies.
House Republicans are demanding significant changes to Obama’s signature health care law in exchange for reopening the government, a demand that Democrats say is absurd.
“It was time for us to take a stand,” Boehner said.
Since Tuesday, the GOP-led House has passed several bills to reopen selected parts of the government. Democratic leaders are rejecting the piecemeal approach, saying the entire government should be reopened and the 800,000 federal workers on furlough put back to work.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ended the argument for most Pentagon civilian employees, ordering nearly all 350,000 back on the job.
Hagel said he based his decision on a Pentagon interpretation of a law called the Pay Our Military Act, which was passed shortly before the partial government shutdown began. Republican lawmakers had complained in recent days that the Obama administration was slow to bring back those workers even though the law allowed it.
In a written statement released Saturday explaining his action, Hagel said the Justice Department advised that the law does not permit a blanket recall of all Pentagon civilians. But government attorneys concluded that the law does allow the Pentagon to eliminate furloughs for “employees whose responsibilities contribute to the morale, well-being, capabilities and readiness of service members.”
Hagel said he has told Pentagon officials, including leaders of the military services, to “identify all employees whose activities fall under these categories.” He said civilian workers should stand by for further word this weekend.
In remarks to reporters, Robert Hale, the Pentagon’s budget chief, said he did not yet know the exact number of civilians who would be brought back to work but that it would be “90 percent plus.” He said there are about 350,000 civilians on furlough.
Hale said he hoped that a “substantial number” could be returned to work on Monday but that an exact timetable was not available.
In a rare Saturday session — and an even rarer showing of bipartisanship — the House voted 407-0 to pass a bill to provide furloughed workers back pay. The Obama administration supports the retroactive pay bill and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he expects the Democratic-led Senate to pass it
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Even a bill that passed without opposition evoked partisan rhetoric.
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Someone try to explain to the American people today that Republicans decided to shut down government on Oct. 1, and on Oct. 5, they decided to pay all those workers, those 800,000 workers that they told, ‘Don’t come in to work,’” said Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif. “If it weren’t so serious it really would be absurd.”
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., noted that many House Democrats supported back pay for federal workers but opposed reopening other selected parts of the government.
The standoff is playing out as an even bigger financial crisis looms. The Treasury Department says the federal government will reach the limit of its authority to borrow money on Oct. 17. If Congress doesn’t raise the debt limit, the U.S. will default on its obligations for the first time, triggering what many economists say would be an economic catastrophe.
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Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Julie Pace contributed to this report.
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Sun Oct 06, 2013 9:26 am |
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