Live updates: The shutdown

A new poll shows most Americans want to fire every member of Congress — but they keep re-electing them. What gives? (In Play)

From Matea Gold:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has been pilloried for his attempt to use a stopgap budget measure to undermine the Affordable Care Act, a maneuver that set in motion the current federal government shutdown and the crisis in Congress. But his role as a leader of the defund movement has only elevated his standing among conservative activists.

That’s clear in the latest fundraising report filed by his joint fundraising committee, in which Cruz reported raising nearly $800,000 in the third quarter. That’s almost double the amount that the Ted Cruz Victory Committee raised from April 1 to June 30, shortly after it was formed.

The Texas senator brought in additional funds directly through his Senate reelection committee and his leadership PAC in the last three months, giving him a total raise of $1.19 million for the third quarter, according to figures released Tuesday evening by his campaign.

Read the full post.

From The Fix:

Stuck on the losing end of public opinion polls since the start of the government shutdown, at least some Senate Republicans think they’ve found some silver lining in a very dark cloud.

On the GOP section of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Web site, Republicans offered the David Letterman-style “Top Ten Reasons The Government Shutdown Isn’t All Bad.”  It apparently has nothing to do with stopping entitlements such as Obamacare, or shaving the national debt, or showing that conservative fiscal managers have backbone.

See the Top Ten here.

From The Fix’s Sean Sullivan:

If the standoff over the federal budget and debt ceiling have reinforced anything about politics, it’s this: Today’s Republican Party is an assemblage of tribes with no real leader.

Read the full post.

The Senate leaders, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, have moved to pick up the pieces of the shattered House effort to move legislation to re-open the government and avoid breaching the debt ceiling, with aides to both senators expressing optimism a deal could be soon at hand.

“Senator Reid and Senator McConnell have re-engaged in negotiations and are optimistic that an agreement is within reach,” said Adam Jentleson, spokesman for Reid (D-Nev.).

“Given tonight’s events, the leaders have decided to work toward a solution that  would reopen the government and prevent default. They are optimistic an agreement can be reached,” said Don Stewart, spokesman to McConnell (R-Ky.).

“We are done for the night,” Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) just told the Washington Post’s Jackie Kucinich.

From The Fix’s Chris Cillizza:

There’s a new number in a national Pew poll that should give incumbents who assume that people hating Congress will exempt them in the next election some pause.  That number? Thirty eight percent — as in 38 percent of people who say they do not want to see their own Member of Congress re-elected in 2014.  While that number is far lower than the 74 percent who say they would like to see most Members of Congress lose, it’s still the highest percentage wanting to get rid of their own member in more than two decades of Pew polling.

Read the full post here.

From the Wonkblog’s Brad Plumer:

There’s been a fair bit of confusion about the timeline for the debt-ceiling crisis. The date Oct. 17 gets tossed around a fair bit as a hard deadline. But that’s probably not the date when we’ll see lots of financial disruptions if Congress fails to lift the debt ceiling.

The real crises are likely to occur a little later in October or early November. But even that’s not certain.

So click here for a rough timeline for the whole debt-ceiling fiasco.

Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz partly blames gridlock on Capitol Hill for the lack of women leaders in Congress. Watch today’s full episode of In Play here.

The House Rules Committee has postponed its hearing as support for Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) new plan appears to be in serious doubt.

Just prior to the postponement, the conservative outfit Heritage Action said it opposed the measure, and rank-and-file lawmakers normally supportive of leadership expressed alarm that they had shut down the government and would get nothing for it except a punitive measure hurting their own staff’s health care, according to GOP chiefs of staff.

Three leading conservatives — Reps. Steve King (R-Iowa), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) — exited a meeting with Boehner’s leadership team all likely opposed to the legislation.

“I’ve got one vote and I’m a ‘no,’ ”  Massie said. Yoho also said he was a definite “no,” and King expressed deep reservations but left some chance of approving it if changes were made.

Boehner can only afford to lose 15 Republican votes out of 232, if all Democrats stand opposed to legislation, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has indicated.

Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation, announced their opposition to the House plan Wednesday and announced that it would be a “key vote.”

The group said the plan did not do enough “to help Americans who are negatively impacted by Obamacare” and failed to stop “new entitlements” associated with the law that are scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2014.

The announcement puts additional pressure on conservatives who may have considered supporting the plan as well as House Republican leaders who have been frantically counting votes since the proposal was unveiled Tuesday morning.

The government shutdown and debt-ceiling fight could have a huge impact on what President Obama accomplishes before his term ends. The Post’s Karen Tumulty, Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis and radio host Mark Levine spoke with PostTV’s On Background about the agenda priorities Obama isn’t addressing while the spending battles continue.

The text of the House proposal has been released. Here it is.

On Tuesday, Fitch Ratings announced that it was accelerating its timetable for a potential U.S. credit rating downgrade, citing the brinksmanship in Washington. Fitch would become the second credit rating firm to downgrade U.S. government debt, which could have ripple effects across a range of markets.

“Political brinkmanship and reduced financing flexibility could increase the risk of a U.S. default,” Fitch said late Tuesday. “The U.S. risks being forced to incur widespread delays of payments to suppliers and employees, as well as Social Security payments to citizens — all of which would damage the perception of U.S. sovereign creditworthiness and the economy.”

Fitch’s decision doesn’t actually downgrade the United States’ credit rating, but serves as a signal that it might should the political situation continue to threaten the U.S.’s ability to pay its debts. The Treasury Department says it will run out of borrowing authority on Thursday — the deadline for Congress to come to an agreement to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

“Although the Treasury would still have limited capacity to make payments after 17 October it would be exposed to volatile revenue and expenditure flows,” Fitch said. “The Treasury may be unable to prioritise debt service, and it is unclear whether it even has the legal authority to do so. The U.S. risks being forced to incur widespread delays of payments to suppliers and employees, as well as social security payments to citizens — all of which would damage the perception of U.S. sovereign creditworthiness and the economy.”

Toward the end of the also-contentious 2011 debt ceiling debate, Standard and Poor’s downgraded the United States’ long-term credit rating from ‘AAA’ to ‘AA+’. It was the first credit rating downgrade for the U.S. in history.

S&P earlier this year adjusted its outlook on the U.S. credit rating from “negative” to “stable,” but the credit rating remains at “AA+.”

Fitch, S&P and Moody’s are considered the three top credit rating agencies.

Here’s the release from Fitch.

Updated at 5:30 p.m.

Stocks tumbled in the final hour Tuesday as the House and Senate battled over measures to reopen the federal government and raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

All three major indexes closed near the day’s lows. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.9 percent, the Standard & Poor’s dropped 0.7 percent and the Nasdaq tech index fell around 0.6 percent.

Markets lurched throughout the day, plunging in mid-afternoon when a planned vote on a House bill  began to unravel, recovering some and then heading into a closing drop even as the House began working on a new version of its bill.

House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office announced Tuesday that the House would vote Tuesday night on Boehner’s new plan for ending the government shutdown and raising the debt limit.

“The House will vote tonight to reopen the government and avoid default,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said. “After listening to members at conference this morning, House Republican leaders will bring a plan to the floor which will end the Obamacare subsidies for elected officials and staff in Washington, D.C., and pressure Senate Democrats to accept more sensible dates for the CR and the debt limit.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said earlier Tuesday afternoon that Boehner would have to pass the bill with all GOP votes.

Here’s the new plan, via Lori Montgomery:

The measure would raise the debt limit through Feb. 7, as in the original proposal. But it would fund federal agencies only through Dec. 15, creating the threat of another government shutdown just before Christmas if lawmakers fail to resolve a dispute over deep spending cuts known as the sequester.

Republicans decided to drop their bid to repeal a tax on medical devices that helps to fund President Obama’s health-care law. But in addition to denying employer subsidies to lawmakers and members of the executive branch, conservatives insisted on denying those subsidies to their own congressional staffs as well.

Republicans also adjusted another proposal to make clear that the Treasury Department would be only temporarily barred from using extraordinary measures to juggle the books after the Feb. 7 deadline.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture notified states on Friday that the free and reduced meals served to students will continue to be served “for several months,” even if Congress fails to reach an agreement on the government shutdown.

Cynthia Long, the director of the Child Nutrition Division, sent a letter (which included a Q&A) to state agencies that are reimbursed for breakfast and lunches provided to students whose low-income families qualify for the subsidized meals.

Long said in the letter that the USDA made fiscal year 2013 “carryover funds” available to reimburse states for meals served in October. She said program operators had expressed concern about how services that would be provided in late October would be impacted “if appropriations are not enacted soon.”

For more on this story, head here.

House Minority Leaders Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) just said the House Democratic caucus would be united against the House GOP’s revamped proposal to fund the government and extend the debt ceiling.

“If they continue on the path they’re on, they’ll need 100 percent Republican votes,” Pelosi said.

From KGO-TV in San Francisco:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has broken up an East Bay drug ring after raiding a half dozen locations and making several arrests Tuesday morning. They arrested 47 year-old Jorge Herrera.

…

Agents started began the raid at 6 a.m. and served warrants at six locations in four cities, including: Oakley, Concord and Antioch. They made four arrests, seizing methamphetamine and cocaine. The agents are actually furloughed employees, so they are not getting paid, but decided these raids couldn’t wait.

“Yeah, we thought that the treat (sic) was there. The threat being, in this case, the distribution of drugs, so we needed to stop this individual and organized crime ring here in the East Bay immediately. And that’s why we chose to do it today,” said FBI spokesperson Peter Lee.

Residents say they never saw suspicious activity around the Pittsburg home and didn’t know the man who was arrested here.

(emphasis ours)

The federal government shutdown proves, once again, that states should control public lands within their bounds, Utah’s attorney general says.

“[I]n these days of federal austerity, we assume substantial risk by relying too heavily upon the federal government to fund and administer programs that directly affect us in our businesses and daily lives,” Attorney General John Swallow and Assistant Attorney General Anthony Rampton argue in a Salt Lake Tribune op-ed.

It’s hardly a new complaint from Utah, which last year passed a law asking the federal government to give back about 20 million acres of public lands, which together make up most of the state, by the end of next year.  In light of Supreme Court precedent and the Constitution, that demand was largely an empty threat, the state’s legislative counsel noted at the time.

More on GovBeat.

House Republicans are regrouping around a new version of their bill to reopen the government and raise the federal debt limit, with a vote by the full House expected as soon as Tuesday night.

The measure would raise the debt limit through Feb. 7, as in the original proposal. But it would fund federal agencies only through Dec. 15, creating the threat of another government shutdown just before Christmas if lawmakers fail to resolve a dispute over deep spending cuts known as the sequester.

Republicans decided to drop their bid to repeal a tax on medical devices that helps to fund President Obama’s health-care law. But in addition to denying employer subsidies to lawmakers and members of the executive branch, conservatives insisted on denying those subsidies to their own congressional staffs as well.

Republicans also adjusted another proposal to make clear that the Treasury Department would be only temporarily barred from using extraordinary measures to juggle the books after the Feb. 7 deadline.

GOP leadership aides said the new measure had been submitted to the House Rules Committee, the first step to a vote on the House floor. But as Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and his leadership team continued trying to round up support for the bill, aides said it remained uncertain when a vote before the full House would take place.

If Republicans manage to push the measure through the House, it would go to the Democratic-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has voiced strong objections to ending employer health subsidies for congressional staff. Democrats are also insisting that the Treasury Department maintain flexibility to manage the next debt-limit deadline.

House GOP leaders have stripped a two-year delay of the medical device tax from their proposal to end the government shutdown and pass a new debt ceiling increase, GOP members and aides confirmed Tuesday afternoon.

The delaying measure, while popular, proved a stumbling block in negotiations because it is part of President Obama’s signature health-care law — a line the White House and Democrats did not want to cross in the current negotiations.

The Affordable Care Act is funded in part by the medical device tax.

The scrapping of the medical device tax delay was first reported by National Review’s Robert Costa.

Jackie Kucinich contributed to this post.

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) told CNN “it does not appear that there are the votes” to pass the plan House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) laid out Tuesday morning.

Dent also suggested that the GOP-controlled House may not send over a bill at all.

“I suspect at this point, the House must regroup, and determine what bill we’ll send over to the Senate — if any,” Dent said.

From Bloomberg News Managing Editor Michael Tackett:

BREAKING. Sen. Feinstein says “it’s all fallen apart”

— Michael Tackett (@tackettdc) October 15, 2013

The key to resolving a more than two-week federal government shutdown and looming debt crisis might just be an obscure tax that most people have never heard of.

We’re talking about the medical device tax, a component of President Obama’s health-care law that has drawn bipartisan criticism. If lawmakers are able to forge a deal that wins passage in both chambers of Congress, there’s growing evidence to suggest the tax could be a key piece of the final agreement.

For a closer look at why, head to The Fix.

A new Pew Research Center poll shows a majority of Republicans and many independents are just fine with the idea of not raising the debt limit by the Treasury Department’s Oct. 17 deadline.

The poll shows 52 percent of Republicans, 38 percent of independents and 36 percent of Americans overall say the country can go past that deadline without major economic problems.

Overall concern is growing — albeit slightly.

Just more than half of Americans — 51 percent — say it is essential to raise the debt ceiling to avoid an economic crisis. That’s slightly more than the 47 percent of Americans who said the same last week.

There is a huge partisan split on this questions, with 37 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats in the new poll believing there would be an economic crisis.

The White House has warned of a default if the debt-ceiling deadline isn’t met, but some Republicans in Congress note that the government can still pay interest on its loans even if the debt ceiling isn’t raised by the deadline — something they argue wouldn’t technically constitute a “default.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Tuesday labeled these members “default deniers.”

Correction: This post initially transposed the week-old Pew poll with the new one. It has been updated.

Furloughed staff returned to the Latin American Youth Center today thanks to a donation from Capital One.

With contract reimbursements on hold due to the federal government shutdown, LAYC had insufficient cash to operate at full capacity. Last week the Columbia Heights nonprofit, which offers youth development services to 5,000 children each year, announced it had reduced its operations to essential services.

The $250,000 gift from Capital One will restore the charity’s usual programming, which includes job training, education and mentoring.

“Knowing how important it is to ensure continuity of supportive programs like homeless services and supports, afterschool programs, and workforce development training for at-risk youth and their families, we felt it was vital to help LAYC continue to serve the region through this difficult time,” said Jon Witter, Capital One’s president of retail and direct banking, in a statement. Capital One has been a longtime partner of the youth center.

It’s one of a crop of stories surfacing about philanthropists, businesses and other groups coming to aid of the nonprofit sector, which has seen detrimental financial impacts from the government shutdown.

Just last week, a Houston-based couple, Laura and John Arnold, gave $10 million in emergency funds to reopen Headstart programs in six states.

In the Senate, members of both parties said bipartisan talks were put on hold as they wait to see if Boehner can muster votes to send a plan from the House.

“They have seized ball control,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a junior member of leadership. “My sense is they have control of this issue on the House side for the next move and the Senate will wait and see what the House sends”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Il.) said the Senate is now waiting for Boehner “to resolve his issues with his caucus,” indicating that he fears the process has now been slowed in the interim.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said it wasn’t clear whether Boehner’s proposal had the support needed to pass the House.

“My advice to our leader would be that we should go ahead with the Senate plan and see what the House’s reaction is,” she said. “Time is getting very short the shutdown’s gone on far too long and with each passing day causes additional harm.”

“The Senate has the responsibility to lead and that’s just what we should do,” she said.

Rank-and-file House Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they had been assured by leadership that they were working to modify their proposal to pick up votes.

But concerns from conservatives raised during the unusually lengthy two-hour conference meeting appeared wide-ranging.

One concern, several said, was that House Republicans were proposing to eliminate employer health-care contributions for White House staff and members of Congress, but not Congressional staffers. Some conservatives believed it would be more fair to apply the measure to Congressional staffers.

Others wanted the bill to include spending cuts or entitlement reforms. Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) said some members were seeking to add the “conscience clause” to the proposal — removing a provision under the federal health care law that requires insurance plans cover contraception.

And other members objected to accepting the key Jan. 15 and Feb. 7 dates envisioned in Senate negotiations for extending government funding and the debt ceiling.

“There was a lot of discussion of dates. A lot,” said Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.).

That’s the takeaway from White House press secretary Jay Carney’s daily briefing.

“So we’re, you know, encouraged by the progress that we’ve seen in the Senate, but we’re far from a deal at this point,” Carney said. “And so we hope that — we hope that progress continues.”

Carney also rebuffed the House GOP’s idea for a two-year delay of the medical device tax and denied reports based on House GOP staff that the White House actually proposed the idea.

“That is not true,” Carney said. “What we have always said is that discussions of the medical device tax or other elements within the Affordable Care Act that lawmakers want to talk about in an effort to improve the Affordable Care Act we are willing to have, but not as in the context of or as ransom for opening the government. That is why a provision like that appears in the latest proposal that seems to be going nowhere from House Republicans, because it’s an effort to try to buy votes from tea party Republicans who shut this government down in the first place.”

Here’s more from the briefing, from Juliet Eilperin:

Jay @PressSec: “There’s no question that we’re very close to a very important deadline, and time is of the essence.”

— Juliet Eilperin (@eilperin) October 15, 2013

You’ve heard of “climate deniers.” But now @PressSec has coined a new term: “debt limit deniers” and “default deniers.” — Juliet Eilperin (@eilperin) October 15, 2013

Carney on whether HHS head would lose her job over #Obamacare: “Sebelius does have the full confidence of the president”

— Juliet Eilperin (@eilperin) October 15, 2013

Carney on negotiating over shutdown: “It depends on what you mean by negotiating. He’s been talking to lawmakers.”

— Juliet Eilperin (@eilperin) October 15, 2013

Organizing for Action’s rally on the steps of the Capitol has drawn very few demonstrators:

At 30 minutes into @OFA protest – 16 people counted on Capitol steps pic.twitter.com/d1iJSId0qc

— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) October 15, 2013

And one of the people it did attract had a not-so-helpful message:

OFA rally on the Capitol steps pic.twitter.com/INqPs9Jknu

— Reid J. Epstein (@reidepstein) October 15, 2013

The “Budget shutdown Day of Action event” began at noon Eastern time.

House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office is pressing the issue of delaying the medical device tax, noting that many House Democrats and most Senate Democrats have voted in favor of its repeal.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday that the issue was a non-starter, despite 33 current Senate Democrats having voted against it. The symbolic vote passed 79-20 earlier this year.

“Is Senator Reid so blinded by partisanship that he is willing to risk default on our debt to protect a ‘pacemaker tax’ that 34 Senate Democrats are on the record opposing, and he himself called ‘stupid’?” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said.

(The 34 includes former senator Mo Cowan of Massachusetts, an appointee who no longer serves in the Senate. His replacement, Sen. Ed Markey, has said he supports getting rid of the tax.)

Reid recent called the medical device tax “stupid” but later backtracked, with his office saying he meant that the idea of repealing it through the budget process was stupid.

The medical device tax is emerging as a key pivot point in this debate. While it’s pretty clear that Congress would vote to get rid of it, it’s highly symbolic as it’s tied to the Affordable Care Act. Thus, by allowing it to be part of a package, the White House and Democrats would be ceding a change to the president’s health care program — something they have sworn they wouldn’t do.

Presenting a unified front, a nonpartisan coalition of 33 organizations representing veterans and members of the military spoke at the World War II Memorial Tuesday morning to demand an end to the government shutdown.

“Our elected officials must understand that posturing and playing politics with veterans is unacceptable,” Garry Augustine, executive director of Disabled American Veterans, said during the peaceful rally on a sunny morning attended by several hundred supporters and media.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has warned that unless the shutdown ends soon, the department will run out of money and be unable to issue disability and pension checks due to be sent Nov. 1. The VA has also reported that the shutdown has halted progress on lowering the backlog of disability claims.

“We have been assured and reassured by the president and by Congress that the budget won’t be balanced on the backs of veterans, yet here we are today,” said Steve Gonzales, assistant director of the American Legion.

Citing the example set by veterans of World War II and other conflicts, Paul Rieckhoff, chief executive officer for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, urged the political players in Washington to “put the country first, and end this shutdown.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), appearing alongside House Democratic leaders shortly after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) spoke, said the speaker “did not have the votes for his proposal.”

She also accused Republicans of “sabotaging a good-faith bipartisan effort coming out of the Senate.”

House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said: “In effect, what they’ve done once again … is to snatch confrontation from the jaws of reasonable compromise.”

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) said Republicans were on the verge of “shutting down the economy” as well as the government “simply because there’s a family feud” going on within their ranks.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) rejected the emerging House plan in a Senate floor speech about 90 minutes after reports first emerged about the new proposal being floated by Speaker John A. Boehner’s leadership team.

Reid said that it was a party-line proposal that undermined the work that he and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had been working on together. “It’s nothing more than a blatant attack on bipartisanship,” Reid said, adding of Senate Democrats: “We felt blind sided.”
He called it “a bill that can’t pass the Senate, and won’t pass the Senate.”

Reid again accused Boehner of trying to save his own job as speaker — an uprising in January nearly toppled him — because of attacks from his right flank.

“I’m very disappointed with John Boehner, who would once again try to preserve his role at the expense of the country,” Reid said.

Rep. Patrick J. Tiberi (R-Ohio), a close ally of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), said if there are not enough votes to pass the proposal the GOP leadership presented to the conference, it could be altered before it hits the floor.

He estimated between 100 and 120 members spoke during the two-hour meeting to offer suggestions as to how the plan could be made better.

“The discussion was how to make the plan better, so I don’t know what the plan ultimately will be,” he said.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday compared House Republicans to the Confederates, saying their goal is to “bring down the government.”

“This is all about a handful of people who got elected as Republicans that want to bring down our government,” Rangel said on CNN. “You can see it in the streets. You can see where they’re coming from. The same way they fought as Confederates, they want to bring down the government and reform it.”

Pressed on his comparison, Rangel noted the region of the country that is most heavily Republican these days.

“You take a look at the states that they control, take a look at the Dixiecrats, see how they went over to the Republican Party,” Rangel said.

The meeting will take place in the Oval Office at 3:15 p.m.

Attending will be House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Assistant Minority Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Reps. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) says the GOP-controlled House has yet to make a final decision about what course it will take — despite leadership having laid out a tentative plan to House GOP members in their meeting Tuesday morning.

“There have been no decisions about what exactly we will do,” Boehner said at a news conference.

Asked about any legislative action today, Boehner was noncommittal. He and his fellow House GOP leaders didn’t mention any specific policy proposals — a sign of the difficult road ahead for the budget and debt ceiling debates.

“We’re talking with our members on both sides of the aisle to try to find a way to move forward today,” he said before exiting.

The entire news conference lasted less than four minutes.

Senior GOP aides acknowledged that the meeting did not go well, and that Republicans face a difficult task in mustering all 217 votes — the bare majority under the House’s current makeup — for the proposal.

Updated at 11:41 a.m. Lori Montgomery contributed to this post.

It sounds like the White House is not onboard with the House GOP’s proposed changes to the Senate package.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage labels the House’s proposal another “ransom.”

“The president has said repeatedly that members of Congress don’t get to demand ransom for fulfilling their basic responsibilities to pass a budget and pay the nation’s bills. Unfortunately, the latest proposal from House Republicans does just that in a partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans who forced the government shutdown in the first place,” Brundage said. “Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have been working in a bipartisan, good-faith effort to end the manufactured crises that have already harmed American families and business owners. With only a couple days remaining until the United States exhausts its borrowing authority, it’s time for the House to do the same.”

The National Review has a copy of the talking points being passed out by House GOP leaders.

Here are some of the more interesting parts:

• To end the government shutdown and avoid a national default, House Republicans are proposing several common-sense changes to make the emerging bipartisan agreement in the Senate fairer for the American people, who are being forced by Washington Democrats to live under the president’s train wreck of a health care law.

…

• The House plan would maintain the emerging deal’s date of the continuing resolution (CR) funding government operations to January 15 while immediately reopening the federal government.

…

• Like the emerging Senate agreement, the House plan would extend the debt ceiling to February 7.  But the House plan would bar the Treasury Department from using accounting gimmicks known as “extraordinary measures,” increasing the transparency of the federal budget process and prohibiting what economist Donald Marron calls the “embarrassingly casual” use today of such measures by the Treasury Secretary.  In the era of President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill, short-term debt limit increases with hard dates and no gimmicks were the norm.  The House plan seeks to restore transparency to the process and deny bureaucrats the ability to use budget gimmicks to mislead the public about the financial condition of the United States.

House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) news conference, which was scheduled for 10 a.m., has still not begun.

We’ll keep you posted when he does speak.

Retirees will have to wait a little longer to learn the size of their upcoming inflation adjustments.

Cost of living adjustments in Social Security, federal retirement, military retirement and certain other programs are linked to an inflation figure that the Labor Department was to release Wednesday. However, that figure along with certain others will be delayed because of the partial government shutdown; they have not been rescheduled.

More on the Federal Eye.

In one of the more emotional points of this morning’s House GOP meeting, Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.) — a second term lawmaker who is a junior member of leadership but also popular among cast-iron conservatives — led the singing of “Amazing Grace” near the start of the huddle.

Southerland, who comes from the funeral home business, sings hymns at burial sites, according to our recent profile.

House Republican leaders plan to push their own proposal to reopen the govt and raise the debt ceiling — a plan that would give Republicans a delay of the medical device tax.

According to two Republicans leaving a closed door meeting of the caucus, their plan would add a two-year repeal of the medical device tax and include a provision eliminating the employer health care contribution for members of Congress and White House official.

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), one of the leading moderates in the House, confirmed the plan on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown.”

“The speaker had said this: that the House is likely to launch an initiative, as early as today, that would do a few things: essentially use the same time frames for the debt limit and the CR as in the Senate negotiations … it would strike the reinsurance tax — the $63 per head tax for the large self-insurers and the large unions,” Dent said. “That would be out and would replaced with a two-year delay of the medical device tax, plus a variation of the derivative of the Vitter language, minus the congressional staff. But I think it would affect Congress and the White House and White House staff.”

The Vitter amendment would force members of Congress and the administration to obtain health care through Obamacare’s health exchanges.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said the plan was designed to be attractive to democrats and would follow time lives established in senate negotiations — funding government agencies until Jan. 15 and raising the debt ceiling until Feb. 7. He said the plan, which House leaders hope to vote on Tuesday, was well received by Republicans.

“We think we’ve enhanced it in a number of ways,” Issa said of the Senate framework.

Asked how the House would react if Senate Democrats reject their changes, he said, “we haven’t passed our bill. They haven’t passed their bill. … We today will pass a bill we believe the Senate should accept based on their likely negotiations.”

Passage of the proposal in the House is no sure bet. Without Democratic support, it will need to get 217 votes from Republican members.

Emerging from the meeting, Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) said many members have “sincere, deep concerns” with the plan, noting that he is willing to reopen the government but has not voted to raise the debt ceiling since 1997 and has vowed never to do so again.

Another Republican close to leadership said “response was tepid” when Boehner laid out the proposal. “It’s going to be a hell of a time” to get to 217 votes, he said. “It’s going to be dicey.”

In one of the more emotional points of the meeting, Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.) — a second term lawmaker who is a junior member of leadership but also popular among cast-iron conservatives — led the singing of “Amazing Grace” near the start of the huddle.

Paul Kane contributed to this report. Updated at 10:18 a.m.

House conservatives, who will be the toughest obstacles to any compromise bill, were noncommittal on the emerging Senate deal as they headed into the House Republican  Conference Tuesday morning.

“I haven’t seen the Senate deal,” said Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), the lead sponsor of an earlier House Republican proposal to link the continuing resolution.

“I just wanted to hear what they have to say,” Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) said.

Others were less optimistic.

“I think we’ve gone from bad to worse,” said Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.)

“That seems to be an oxymoron Senate and plan,” Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Tex.) said.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), one of the leaders of the bipartisan negotiations in the Senate, cautioned Tuesday morning that there is lots of ground to cover before a deal is done.

He also continued to criticize the cast-iron conservative wing of the party that he said “hijacked” the process for two months.

“In fairness, on our side of the aisle, we’ve wasted two months focused on something that was never going to happen,” Corker told CNN. “I won’t say that I did, but a number of folks did, and what we could have been doing all this time is focused on those mandatory changes that all of us know our country needs.  And we’ve blown that opportunity, I hate to say it.”

Corker added: “But, look, there’s a lot of work that’s going to be done over the next two or three days.  I don’t think it’s time to spike the football in the end zone yet.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has said the Senate is 70 to 80 percent of the way to a deal, while Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) estimated that the deal would get done sometime Tuesday and get a vote by Wednesday.

Nearly a year removed from a presidential election that put its electoral and demographic weaknesses on full display, the ongoing government shutdown has badly hampered the Republican party’s hopes of rebranding itself in advance of both the 2014 midterms and the 2016 presidential election, according to an analysis of three weeks worth of Washington Post-ABC News polling data.

More on The Fix.

Some folks had bemoaned the  fate of the Agriculture Department’s “Great Stink Bug Count,” a citizen-led census of the pesky brown bugs which was thrown into question due to the shuttered government.

But never fear. We’re told that the participants in the project — more than 300 people, from middle-school students to music professors — were already keeping records before the shutdown, and that the USDA’s university partners have stepped in to collect them after the government had to go dark.

More about the Notorious B.U.G. on the Loop.

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) says he thinks the Senate will reach a deal Tuesday on bringing an end to the shutdown and debt ceiling debate.

“…I think we’ll get an agreement today in the Senate.  I’m not saying we can pass it today because there’s logistics about drafting and getting it to the floor and the procedural things we’ll have to do,” Pryor told CNN. “But my guess is — this is just guess — but my guess is we’ll pass something in the Senate tomorrow.  Get it over to the House as quickly as possible.  Hopefully they’ll pass it shortly thereafter.

From there, he says, it’s up to the Senate to send a strong signal with its vote by getting more than two-thirds of senators to agree.

Pryor, who has been working on the deal with a bipartisan group of senators, said they have set a high threshold for the number of votes they want to get.

“And one of the goals we really set out within our group, look, we don’t want 60 votes,” Pryor said. ” We want to get 70, 75, 80 votes on this if we possibly can because we think that really puts pressure on the House to get this passed.”

Worth noting: The Senate’s immigration bill got 68 votes earlier this year but has yet to come to a vote in the House or get House Republicans to jump on board. In other words, that 70-plus-vote threshold is not a new concept.

A coalition of 33  organizations representing veterans and members of the military are to gather at the World War II Memorial Tuesday morning to demand an end to the government shutdown that members say is harming veterans and military families.

“The shutdown has been devastating for the nation’s military readiness and for the veterans, service members, families and survivors in the uniformed services community,” said a statement from The Military Coalition, which represents among other groups the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars,  Disabled American Veterans, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America,  and the National Military Family Association.

More on the Federal Eye.

Confused by all the crazy ups and downs of Washington over the government shutdown and debt ceiling? Here’s a primer on what’s happening.

President Obama and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) spoke by telephone about the emerging deal to end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling on Monday, according to a Senate official.