WASHINGTON — The long-feared government shutdown arrived at midnight Tuesday after a day of brinkmanship by Republicans who made repeated efforts to undo the new national health plan in a standoff with Senate Democrats and President Obama.
The shutdown began after House Republicans refused to pass a funding measure that does not alter ObamaCare.
“This is all a subterfuge to satisfy the Tea Party-driven Republicans,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on the Senate floor as the deadline loomed. “This very, very strange agenda that is so hurtful to the American people.”
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo early Tuesday morning that alerted federal agencies to shut down.
“Agencies should now execute plans for an orderly shutdown due to the absence of appropriations,” said the letter from OMB Director Sylvia Burwell.
About 800,000 federal workers were still ordered to go to work Tuesday, but only for four hours to perform “shutdown-related” chores. They are banned at the risk of penalty from checking government e-mail and smart phones.
The shutdown also led to the closure of national parks and monuments, including the Statue of Liberty. Even the “panda cam” at the National Zoo went dark.
“They actually did it,” Obama tweeted early Tuesday. “A group of Republicans in the House just forced a government shutdown over ObamaCare instead of passing a real budget.”
Despite the shutdown, ObamaCare will begin being implemented today, and its Web site is still up.
About an hour and a half after the shutdown, Speaker John Boehner held a terse press conference where he denied Republicans were trying to destroy Obama’s signature health care program.
‘We want basic fairness for all Americans under Obamacare,” Boehner said.
Earlier, the president ripped the GOP’s efforts to stop ObamaCare, comparing the House GOP caucus to hostage-takers.
“You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job . . . or just because there’s a law there that you don’t like,” Obama chided hours before the deadline.
The president added that a shutdown would throw a “wrench” into the US economy.
“The federal government is America’s largest employer,” he said. “These Americans [federal workers] are our neighbors.”
He said members of the military will remain on duty, and he assured them in a video that they would still be paid on time.
Department of Defense civilian employees, however, might be furloughed.
Obama accused House Republicans of making “extraneous and controversial demands” in order to “save face after making some impossible promises to the extreme right wing of their party” in last year’s elections.
Boehner insisted Republicans were standing up for the wishes of the entire nation, most of which opposes ObamaCare.
Senate Democrats refused to accept a House GOP plan that would fund the government but delay launching ObamaCare.
The Senate passed a bill to keep the government running after stripping out the ObamaCare provision on a party-line 54-46 vote.
That sent the issue back to House Republicans, who decided to take another stab at attaching a “poison pill” to a resolution to keep the government running.
After the House plan passed, it was quickly rejected by the Senate less than an hour later.