Reid: Government funding offer ‘biggest compromise I ever made in my career’

WASHINGTON — Despite refusing numerous Republican offers of compromise over the past several weeks, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now claims that his insistence on that government spending remains the same represents “the biggest compromise” he has ever made.

Reid has repeatedly declared that the only way to end the government shutdown is for the House to pass the Senate’s funding bill, which funds the government at sequester levels for the next two months. Republicans have offered amendments to that bill, and want to resolve the differences between the two parties with a conference committee.

Reid has refused those proposals, and the Senate has each time sent back the same “clean” funding bill, which continues to run the government at sequester levels, to the House.

Republicans have accused Reid of being intransigent and of refusing to negotiate.

“By refusing to negotiate, Harry Reid and the president are putting our country on a pretty dangerous path,” Boehner said Tuesday.

But Reid says that by agreeing to funding the government at sequester levels, which he says is $70 billion less than he would like to use to fund the government, is a huge compromise in and of itself.

“It’s the biggest compromise I ever made in my career as a member of congress of some 31 years,” Reid said. “It may not sound like much to some people, but it was really big. And my caucus remembers what I asked them to do. So for someone to suggest to any of my Senators that we haven’t negotiated is simply unfair. And to say that we won’t negotiate is unfair!”

Reid has said Democrats are willing to negotiate on anything Republicans want, but only after they pass the Senate’s funding bill and re-open the government.

Via: Daily Caller

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The Defund-Obamacare Civil War

A handful of conservative Republicans walked into a meeting with Majority Leader Eric Cantor Monday night anticipating a discussion — an effort to find consensus.

What they got instead was a perfunctory heads-up about his plan for the upcoming fight over the “continuing resolution,” or CR, a bill to continue funding the government when the current appropriations run out. Under Cantor’s plan, the House would pass two different bills, a standard CR and a measure to defund Obamacare. Through parliamentary wizardry, though, the House would keep the Senate from voting on the CR bill until it had also voted on the Obamacare measure.

The meeting was part of what has been a difficult rollout for the Virginia Republican’s proposal, which is facing significant opposition from conservatives who would like to push harder to defund or delay Obamacare. The vote on the measures, planned for today or tomorrow, could easily go down in flames.

First, influential conservative outside groups such as the Club for Growth trashed the plan. Then, Senator Mike Lee, the original architect of the use-the-CR-to-defund-Obamacare strategy, ripped Cantor’s idea as a “face-saving” gimmick that added insult to the injury of abandoning the grassroots’ calls for a do-or-die fight on Obamacare. “It is not a plan to defund Obamacare — it’s a plan to facilitate the passage of a CR in a way that allows people to claim that they’re defunding Obamacare without actually doing so,” Lee told me.

Via: National Review Online

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The Latest on the Dog and Pony CR Plan (Continuing Resolution)

Today, Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced his new dog and pony CR plan to the House Republican Conference.  They will ensure that the Senate sends a clean CR without defunding Obamacare to the president’s desk.  The catch is that the House will vote to defund Obamacare in the CR, thereby saving members from an embarrassing vote, while splitting off the defund rider when the bill heads to the Senate.  The Senate will be able to vote down the defund bill separately and then send a clean CR straight to the President.

So when will they fight Obamacare?

The next time!

Yes, they will fight on the next debt ceiling battle later this year, according to NRO’s Jonathan Strong:

“Towards the end, however, he dropped a big piece of news about the House Republican strategy heading into the next fiscal fight — over raising the debt ceiling. To increase the debt ceiling, Cantor said, Republicans will demand a one-year delay to Obamacare.”

As we’ve noted a number of times, this plan is beyond comical:

• Why in the world would anyone believe you are willing to fight on a harder battle, one which raises the false specter of a default, when you are not willing to fight over a plain government funding bill?
• The CR coincides with the implementation date of Obamacare; the debt ceiling fight will be at least a few weeks after implementation begins.
• If Democrats know that you will always blink out of fear of brinkmanship, why would they listen to you and delay Obamacare?  There is no difference between defund or delay if you lack the courage to follow through with the threat.
• Republicans already delayed the debt ceiling fight in January for the explicit purpose of dealing with the CR first.  Now they are reversing the order again.  Who is dumb enough to fall for this chicanery?

Another issue here is that leadership is trying to use the sequester cuts as the shiny object for the CR.  They are saying that the CR will reflect the $967 billion annualized discretionary spending levels set forth in the Budget Control Act along with the sequester.  There are two problems with this shiny object, aside for the fact that some random discretionary cuts are inconsequential when compared to the fight over Obamacare.

Via: Red State

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