Congress likely to give workers back pay
WASHINGTON — A partial government shutdown enters its fifth day, with Congress convening for a session that promises no progress in breaking the impasse but will at least offer back pay to furloughed federal workers.
The GOP House is scheduled to vote on legislation backed by the White House and congressional Democrats that would make sure the 800,000 sidelined government employees would get their pay when the shutdown ends. The Senate is expected to clear it later, even as early as Saturday, for President Barack Obama’s signature.
Lawmakers keep replaying the same script on Capitol Hill: House Republicans pass piecemeal bills to reopen popular and politically sensitive programs — on Friday, disaster relief and food aid for the poor — while Democrats insist the House vote on a straightforward Senate-passed measure to reopen all of government.
“But the far right of the Republican Party won’t let Speaker John Boehner give that bill a yes-or-no vote,” Obama said in his Saturday radio and Internet address. “Take that vote. Stop this farce. End this shutdown now.”
There seemed little chance of that. For one thing, flinching by either side on the shutdown might be seen as weakening one’s hand in an even more important fight looming just over the horizon as the combatants in Washington increasingly shifted their focus to a midmonth deadline for averting a default.
“This isn’t some damn game,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said as the White House and Democrats held to their position. Republicans pointed to a quote in The Wall Street Journal from an anonymous White House official that “we are winning ... It doesn’t really matter to us” how long the shutdown lasts.
At issue in the shutdown is a temporary funding measure to keep the government fully open through mid-November or mid-December. More than 100 stopgap continuing resolutions have passed without much difficulty since the last shutdown in 1996. But tea party Republicans, their urgency intensified by the rollout of health insurance marketplaces this month, are demanding concessions in Obama’s health care law as their price for the funding legislation, sparking the shutdown impasse with Democrats.
“I was disappointed when certain parts of the federal government were forced to shut down because Senate Democrats refused to make any changes whatsoever to the deeply flawed health care law known as ObamaCare,” said Texas Sen. John Cornyn.
