WASHINGTON – House Republican leaders struggled Tuesday to craft a new proposal to reopen the government and change the president’s health care law, after a plan presented behind closed doors to the Republican rank-and-file failed to attract enough support immediately to pass.
After more than two hours, Republican leaders backed off the plan that had emerged Tuesday. Speaker John A. Boehner told reporters that there were “no decisions about what exactly we will do.”
“We’re trying to find a way forward in a bipartisan way that would continue to provide fairness to the American people under Obamacare,” Boehner said, but he also acknowledged that “there are a lot of opinions” among his fractious members.
The apparent disarray left Boehner with a crucial decision to make as time ticked down toward a possible default on government obligations on Thursday. Does he accept whatever bipartisan plan emerges from the Senate, most likely on Tuesday, or does he continue to try to get House Republicans in line behind a counterproposal that, as of yet, does not exist?
Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the House majority whip, said Republican leaders were “very cognizant of the calendar.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., said that if House Republicans could not rally behind the proposal that their leadership rolled out Tuesday, they would most likely be forced to accept the plan taking shape in the Senate - something many Republican House members have already said is unacceptable.
“If our party can’t pass this, then there’s no doubt we’re going to end up with what the Senate sends us,” Kinzinger said.
But House Republicans appear intent to extract at least one concession: depriving members of Congress, the president, the vice president and White House political appointees of government contributions when they purchase health insurance under the law’s new exchanges.
In the Senate, Republicans prepared to meet at lunch Tuesday to hear from their leadership about a deal with Democrats that could reopen the government and lift the threat of an American default.
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, will try to sell his colleagues on the Senate proposal during an early meeting of the Senate Republican conference. The deal would reopen the government until Jan. 15 and raise the debt limit until Feb. 7. In addition, lawmakers would agree to conclude negotiations on a longer-term budget by the middle of December.
