The White House is now preparing for a Republican-engineered government shut down that conservatives feel can force the government to defund Obamacare — you know, that law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court:
The White House told federal agencies on Tuesday to prepare for a government shutdown.
President Obama’s budget director Sylvia Matthews Burwell in a memo to agencies said they should set their plans in case Congress fails to pass a funding measure by the end of the month. The government would shut down Oct. 1 without action by Congress.
While there is time for Congress to act, Burwell wrote that “prudent management” requires agencies to prepare for a shutdown.Only activities that are required by law would be allowed to continue to function during a shutdown, the memo states. A similar memo was released twice in 2011 amid potential shutdowns.
Conservative Republicans in the House and Senate are demanding that any government funding bill include language defunding ObamaCare and have said they will oppose a funding measure that doesn’t include the ObamaCare defunding language.
Since Senate Democrats and President Obama are not expected to accept such language, the bill would likely lead to a government shutdown Oct. 1.
GOP leaders are expected to discuss various options for moving forward at a conference meeting Wednesday. Leaders appear to be leaning toward bringing a bill to the floor that would include language defunding ObamaCare.
Also GO HERE to read about how and why this is likely to happen.
And GO HERE to read this column which still holds up.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.