Obama Signs Bill to Reopen Government and Avoid Default

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President Barack Obama signed a bill into law early Thursday morning that ended the 16-day government shutdown and averted an impending financial crisis by raising the debt ceiling.

After Obama and Democrats defeated repeated efforts over the past two weeks by House Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the president’s signature health care achievement, the Senate passed the budget measure Wednesday night by a vote of 81-18 followed several hours later by a 285-144 vote in the Republican-controlled House. In the House, 87 Republicans joined the solidly united Democrats to assure the victory. All of the “no” votes in both chambers were cast by Republicans.

The Continuing Appropriations Act, 2014 is retroactive to Oct. 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year, and funds the government through Jan. 15, 2014. The debt limit has been extended through Feb. 7.

President Obama signed the bill around 12:30 a.m., which set the stage for Thursday’s reopening of the nation’s parks and monuments, returning furloughed federal employees to work and restoring shutdown government services.

Shortly before 1 a.m. Thursday, the Office of Management and Budget issued a formal memorandum ordering federal agencies to reopen.

“Today, the President signed a continuing resolution that brings employees back to work and reopens many government functions,” OMB Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell said in the memo addressed to all heads of executive departments and agencies.

“All employees who were on furlough due to the absence of appropriations may now return to work. You should re-open offices in a prompt and orderly manner.”

Although ending the shutdown was a clear victory for President Obama, he struck a conciliatory tone.

“I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again:  I am willing to work with anybody, I am eager to work with anybody – Democrat or Republican, House or Senate members – on any idea that will grow our economy, create new jobs, strengthen the middle class, and get our fiscal house in order for the long term,” Obama said in a brief, oddly-timed White House appearance Wednesday night between the Senate and House voting. “I’ve never believed that Democrats have a monopoly on good ideas.  And despite the differences over the issue of shutting down our government, I’m convinced that Democrats and Republicans can work together to make progress for America.”

Regardless of whether President Obama wants to publicly admit it, the vote was an undeniable victory for the White House over Tea Party activists who shut down the federal government in an unsuccessful attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said, “If we learn nothing else, I hope we learn we shouldn’t get behind a strategy that has no endgame.”

The agreement lifts the $16.7 trillion debt limit, allowing the U.S. to pay its bills. Standard & Poor’s dropped the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+ after the 2011 debt ceiling crisis. Another credit rating agency, Fitch, said earlier in the week that it might follow suit if the U.S. defaulted on its obligations. A third credit rating agency, Moody’s, still has the U.S. rated AAA.

The White House made a minor concession by agreeing to require verification of the income of those qualifying for health insurance subsidies.

After Republicans lost their bid to repeal national health legislation, they suffered a series of other setbacks, including a last-ditch proposal that would have eliminated employer contributions for lawmakers and forced the president, vice president and all political appointees to participate in health care exchanges administered by states without a tax subsidy.

“We took some bread crumbs and left an entire meal on the table,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said after the deal was announced. “This has been a really bad two weeks for the Republican Party.”

Despite their well-known animus for each other, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reached a last-minute deal Wednesday that ended impasse. They announced their agreement Wednesday afternoon on the Senate floor.

“After weeks spent facing off across a partisan divide that often seemed too wide to cross, our country came to the brink of disaster,” Reid said. “What we’ve done is send a message to Americans…and in addition to that, to the citizens of every country in the world, that the United States lives up to its obligations.”

Standing next to Reid in the Senate, McConnell indicated that the nation hasn’t seen the last of GOP efforts to eliminate the Affordable Care Act.

“Republicans remain determined to repeal this terrible law,” he said. “But for today – for today –the relief we hope is to reopen the government, avoid default and protect the historic cuts we have achieved under the Budget Control Act.”

Although the Affordable Care Act was passed by the House and Senate, signed into law by President Obama, and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, House Republicans have made more than 40 attempts to repeal the landmark legislation – all without success.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found, “By a 22-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent), the public blames the Republican Party more for the shutdown than President Barack Obama – a wider margin of blame for the GOP than the party received during the last shutdown in 1995-96.

“Just 24 percent of respondents have a favorable opinion about the GOP, and only 21 percent have a favorable view of the Tea Party, which are both at all-time lows in the history of poll.”

Senators Reid and McConnell agreed as part of their deal to set up a budget conference committee assigned to put the country on a long-term path to fiscal stability. The panel will be chaired by Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee. The budget conference committee is scheduled to issue its report by Dec. 13, three weeks before the new debt ceiling limit is reached on Jan. 15.

Because Republicans felt that Obama would blink during the latest budget showdown, they had no exit strategy in the event the president did not give in to their demands. That proved to be a costly miscalculation. What the most rabid wing of the GOP did not realize was that Obama had already decided not to give in to their threats to shut down government if they did not get their way.

According to the New York Times, “More than two years ago, President Obama was still in the thick of his previous showdown with Republican House leaders over the nation’s debt limit when he called five senior advisers into his office. He did not ask their advice, one said. Rather, he told them, in a way that brooked no discussion: From now on, no more negotiating over legislation so basic and essential to the economy, and the country.

“’I’m not going through this again. It’s bad for democracy. It’s bad for the presidency,’” Mr. Obama said, according to the adviser, who declined to be identified describing internal discussions. The president then told the group – his Treasury secretary, chief Congressional lobbyist, chief economic adviser and both his and the vice president
’s chiefs of staff – to spread that word, “‘even in your body language.’”

In the end, Republicans got the message.

“We’ve been locked in a fight over here, trying to bring government down to size, trying to do our best to stop Obamacare,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told a Cincinnati radio station on Wednesday. “We fought the good fight. We just didn’t win.”

That doesn’t mean they won’t win the next fight. Although President Obama refused to be steamrolled by Tea Party antics, he has signaled a willingness to compromise with Republicans, even on issues dear to his Democratic base.

“Keep in mind that the budget that we are going to pass under any deal is going to be the Republican budget. It will have cuts that are much more substantial than Democrats would prefer,” Obama said in an interview with WABC on Tuesday. “The Democrats have not asked for anything to reopen the government. The Democrats haven’t asked for anything for paying our bills on time.”

And that’s part of the problem, according to some Democrats.

“At no point have we said what our demands are. All you’ve heard was what their demands are,” Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.) told Politico. “Maybe we should put down what our demands are of what we need and what we want because there’s things that are important and dear to us also, and then the negotiations start from there.”

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