Temporary Funding Bill Stopping Obamacare Clears First Hurdle in House

A stopgap federal spending bill that also would deny funding for Obamacare cleared its first hurdle in the House of Representatives on Thursday, paving the way for passage of the measure on Friday.

By a vote of 230-192, the Republican-controlled House approved the rules governing debate of the legislation, which is scheduled for Friday.

The measure is designed to provide money for government agencies to continue operating at the start of the new fiscal year and avert shutdowns on Oct. 1.

The White House is promising to veto, if necessary, the Republican effort to wreck President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law as part of House legislation to prevent a partial government shutdown.

The official policy statement, issued Thursday, said the GOP attempt to block Obamacare ''advances a narrow ideological agenda that threatens our economy and the interests of the middle class" and would deny "millions of hard-working, middle-class families the security of affordable health coverage."

The veto threat was expected and wasn't going to stop House Republicans from pressing their effort to defund the healthcare law.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the House will pass the bill Friday to keep the government running while undercutting Obamacare.

"The fight over here has been won. The fight [in the Senate] is just beginning," Boehner said Thursday. "I expect my Senate colleagues to do everything they can to defund this law, just like the House is going to do."

Boehner also addressed the need for Congress to raise the government's borrowing cap to avoid a first-ever U.S. default on its obligations. Boehner said: "Let me be very clear. Republicans have no interest in defaulting on our debt — none."

While raising the possibility of a government closure, the latest GOP plan is actually aimed at avoiding one. GOP leaders are looking to shift the fight over healthcare to even more important legislation required to prevent the government from defaulting on its financial obligations.

Even top advocates of the strategy to defund Obamacare by attaching it to a stopgap government funding bill acknowledge it has no future in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Senate Democrats have the votes to strip away the healthcare provision and send the stopgap measure right back to the House.

House Democrats have signaled that they don't like the underlying stopgap measure because it is consistent with the across-the-board sequestration cuts they detest, but they'll face a lot of pressure to supply votes if a "clean" funding bill comes back from the Senate.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama would be willing to accept a short-term budget at current spending levels to keep the government open and provide time for negotiating a broader deal.

Republicans in the House spent Wednesday talking about how hard they would fight to derail the healthcare law on the eve of its implementation and weren't conceding that their Senate rivals would undo their handiwork. But a key force in the tea party drive against the law conceded the point even before the fight officially began, yet urged the House to force a government shutdown rather than retreat.

"Harry Reid will no doubt try to strip the defund language from the continuing resolution, and right now, he likely has the votes to do so," said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, referring to the Senate majority leader, a Nevada Democrat. "At that point, House Republicans must stand firm, hold their ground and continue to listen to the American people."

House Republicans expressed anger when Cruz conceded that Senate Democrats have the votes to beat him. Cruz was only reflecting reality, but House Republicans accused him of surrendering before the fight even began.

Cruz is advocating a shutdown rather than allow the healthcare law to move forward. He told The Associated Press Thursday that the 1995-1996 government shutdown was just a "partial, temporary government shutdown" that didn't hurt Republicans politically as much as most people think and that it helped spark welfare reform in 1996 and a budget deal in 1997.

"Nobody likes that outcome. But it also wasn't the end of the world," Cruz said.

Cruz's reading of history is open to question; it's true that during the partial shutdown, essential government services continued, but the confrontation had little connection to welfare reform or the budget deal that came more than a year later. And the shutdown was key to Bill Clinton's political resurrection.

A likely outcome of Friday's vote would be that the House would vote to pass a funding bill stripped of the healthcare provision and send it to Obama to avert a shutdown. Top GOP leaders in the House and Senate made it clear they have no appetite for a shutdown.

"I don't think that any reasonable person thinks there's anything to be gained by a government shutdown," Republican Sen. John Cornyn, another Texan, said. "Rather than a shutdown of government, what we need is a Republican victory in 2014 so we can be in control. I'm not sure those are mutually compatible."

GOP leaders have telegraphed they would likely concede to the Senate's demand for a stopgap spending bill shorn of the Obamacare provision but that they would carry on the fight over legislation to increase the government's borrowing cap.

The debt-limit measure, required to allow the government to pay all of its bills on time, would be brought to the House floor as early as next week and would allow the Treasury to borrow freely for one year.

Republicans vow to load that bill with a GOP wish list, including another assault on the healthcare bill and a provision to force the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, a project environmentalists oppose and that the Obama administration so far has refused to approve.

Obama, speaking Wednesday to business executives at a meeting of the Business Roundtable, said, "You have never seen, in the history of the United States, the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt ceiling being used to extort a president or a governing party and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and have nothing to do with the debt."

On Thursday, Boehner jabbed at Obama for saying he won't negotiate with Republicans over raising the debt ceiling, noting that the Obama administration negotiated with Russia over how to address chemical weapons in Syria.

"While the president is happy to negotiate with Vladimir Putin, he won't engage with the Congress on a plan that deals with the deficits that threaten our economy," Boehner told reporters.