House GOP leaders decided Wednesday to delay until next week a contentious vote on keeping government funding going, senior Republicans said.
Rank-and-file Republicans had not fully come aboard their leadership’s complicated plan to keep federal agencies operating at current austerity levels while forcing a Senate vote on whether to defund President Obama’s health-care initiative. Under that plan the Senate— with it’s 55-seat Democratic majority— would surely dismiss the Obamacare rider and keep the government running, a scenario that outside conservative groups have lambasted in the last 24 hours.
However, House conservatives said Wednesday that they might be willing to go along with the leadership plan if they can craft a longer term plan to fight next month’s showdown on increasing the federal debt ceiling.
Exiting the conservative caucus’s weekly meeting, several House Republicans said the plan would be to wage the health-care fight on higher ground over the debt ceiling. They would negotiate for a one-year delay in Obamacare and also give Democrats a higher funding level for federal agencies — eliminating for one-year the so-called sequestration caps. This scenario would also give Obama an increase in the debt ceiling for some time.
“Maybe this thing could work,” said Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.), a senior member of the Republican Study Committee.
