Government Shutdown = No More Snacks For Kids In School – 10-07-2013 – Washington is no closer to ending the government shutdown, which entered its second week Monday, as Democrats remain unmoved by refocused GOP efforts to reach a broader budget deal.
“I believe he’s mistaken,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday regarding House Speaker John Boehner’s insistence that there are not enough votes in the House to move a stopgap spending measure to reopen the government with no strings attached. “One sure-fire way to find out if the bill will pass is to have a vote on it.”
Boehner, R-Ohio, seeks to end the shutdown and raise the $16.7 trillion federal debt ceiling as part of one budget negotiation in which he hopes to extract some concessions from Democrats on deficit reductions and the Affordable Care Act. The Treasury Department has said the deadline for raising the debt ceiling is Oct. 17.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a leading voice in the shutdown debate for his advocacy of ending President Obama’s health care law, told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday that a debt ceiling package should include structural changes to reduce spending, no new taxes, and provisions to “mitigate the harms” of the health care law. “The debt ceiling historically has been among the best leverage the Congress has to rein in the executive,” Cruz said.
Boehner told ABC’s This Week that despite Democrats’ insistence to the contrary, “there are not the votes in the House” to pass a “clean” stopgap bill.
