(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) The Republican-led US House voted to attach a one-year delay of Obamacare to a must-pass spending bill, dramatically raising the likelihood of a partial government shutdown tomorrow.
The 231-192 vote early this morning, mostly along party lines, puts the House on a collision course with Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama, who say they won't accept Republicans' conditions for keeping the government operating. It is at least the fourth time in the past three years that lawmakers have taken the US to the brink of a fiscal crisis.
The vote marks a sharp turn for House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders, who earlier resisted taking a hard line on Obama's 2010 healthcare law until they gave in to the demands of a few dozen Tea Party-backed lawmakers.
"Let's take a year and perfect, if you can, this bill," said Representative Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican. "To say that what we're after tonight is to shut down the government is just not so."
The action now returns to the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said the chamber will reject the House amendment.
He called the Republicans' latest plan to gut the healthcare law "pointless."
A last-minute deal before tomorrow is still achievable though time is running out. One possible move is for both chambers to pass a short-term funding measure - for a few days to a week - to keep the government open and leave more time for debate.
The House plan would extend government funding through December 15, a month longer than a plan passed by the Senate. The House also amended the spending bill to repeal the 2.3 per cent excise tax on medical devices.
Seeking to deflect the blame for a shutdown, House Republicans are set to pass a separate bill that would ensure that US troops, as well as some civilians and contractors who work for the military, are paid if the government shuts down.
Concerns that the budget impasse will hurt economic growth helped push the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to its first weekly decline since August. The index fell 0.4 per cent to 1,691.75 on September 27 and dropped 1.1 per cent for the week. The rate on 10-year Treasury notes fell three basis points to 2.62 per cent.
A shutdown could reduce fourth-quarter economic growth by as much as 1.4 percentage points, depending on its duration, according to economists. The biggest effect would come from the output lost from furloughed workers.
Even if Congress resolves the spending fight, lawmakers would immediately move to the next fiscal dispute over raising the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling.
Unless Congress acts, the US won't have enough money to pay all of its bills at some point between October 22 and October 31, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The House plan would postpone for one year a central provision of Obamacare: the requirement that almost all individuals obtain insurance. Tax subsidies scheduled to begin on January 1, 2014, would start a year later, and the measure would suspend some Obamacare taxes for the 2014 tax year.
The measure would allow employers with religious objections to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage to employees for a year.
While many Senate Democrats oppose the tax on medical devices, that doesn't mean they want to use the spending bill to repeal it. The leading Senate advocate of ending the medical- device tax, Democrat Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, said she opposed doing it through the spending bill.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California opposed the Republican plan in absentia; she was celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary.
House Republicans have voted more than 40 times to delay, defund or repeal all or part of the 2010 healthcare law, which is designed to expand coverage to at least 30 million people. Some of the narrower proposals became law. The US Supreme Court upheld the law in June 2012.
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