WASHINGTON — Both sides dug in Sunday, taking the budget battle over ObamaCare down to the wire for a government shutdown at midnight Monday night.
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy vowed that Republicans will keep passing spending bills to keep the government in business — but only if they also dismantle or delay ObamaCare.
“I promise you this, we will pass the bill . . . that will have fundamental changes in ObamaCare that can protect the economy for America,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on “Fox News Sunday.”
He said Republicans have legislation ready if the Democratic-run Senate removes a one-year delay of ObamaCare from the spending bill passed by the House early Sunday. The Senate is expected to do just that, throwing it back to the House in a high-stakes game of legislative hot potato.
President Obama and Senate Democrats insist on a “clean” spending bill and say it will be the GOP’s fault if government funding runs out at 11:59 p.m.
A financial analyst said on Sunday that a shutdown could send the Dow Jones index plummeting 200 to 1,000 points.
“If things aren’t resolved quickly, that could be just the start,’’ Adam Sarhan, CEO of Sarhan Capital, told Reuters.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said he was “afraid” a shutdown couldn’t be avoided.
“The House position, which is basically the same one they sent us the last time, is going to be rejected again,” Durbin (D-Ill.) told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) accused House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) of playing “games.”
“We are on the eve of a shutdown, and there is only one way to prevent it: for the House to pass a clean continuing resolution,” Schumer said.
“All the other games and brinkmanship by Speaker Boehner are not aimed at avoiding a shutdown but are merely a subterfuge to lift the blame from his shoulders.”
Former President Bill Clinton egged on Obama to let the government close down and let Republicans “take their medicine.”
“I guess he could stop [a shutdown], but the current price of stopping it is higher than the price of letting the Republicans do it and taking their medicine,” Clinton told ABC’s “This Week.”
“I think there are times when you have to call people’s bluff,” said Clinton, who 17 years ago stared down House Republicans who demanded spending cuts to Medicare and other programs.
That was the last time the government closed down.
The Republicans took the blame then, and Democrats are banking on the same outcome this time.
Meanwhile, Republicans also blasted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for waiting until Monday to take up the House bill.
“If the Senate stalls until Monday afternoon . . . it would be an act of breathtaking arrogance by the Senate Democratic leadership,” Boehner said.
“They will be deliberately bringing the nation to the brink of a government shutdown for the sake of raising taxes on seniors’ pacemakers and children’s hearing aids and plowing ahead with the train wreck’’ that is ObamaCare, he said.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has led the conservative assault on ObamaCare, fumed, “There’s no reason the Senate should be home on vacation.”
Cruz said Republicans were the only ones negotiating.
“What the House of Representatives has done is a step removed from defunding — it’s delaying it,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Now that’s the essence of a compromise. For all of us who want to see it repealed, simply delaying it for American families on the same terms as has been done for American corporations. That’s a compromise.”
A group of House Republican gathered on the steps outside the Senate and blasted Democrats for “running out the clock.”