Obama administration mobilizes to save faltering spending bill

Reuters ^ | December 11, 2014 | BY DAVID LAWDER AND RICHARD COWAN

[Oldeconomybuyer]

The Obama administration made a last-ditch attempt on Thursday to drum up Democratic support to salvage a faltering $1.1 trillion spending bill, just hours ahead of a midnight U.S. government shutdown deadline.

Administration officials from President Barack Obama down to staff at the Department of Education were phoning Democrats in the House of Representatives to ask them to set aside objections to a financial provision and pass the measure to fund most of the government through September.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

STOP OBAMA!!

[goldstategop]

[SunkenCiv]

Rand Paul On Shutdown: "Even Though It Appeared I Was Participating In It, It Was A Dumb Idea"

I said throughout the whole battle that shutting down the government was a dumb idea. Even though it did appear as if I was participating in it, I said it was a dumb idea. And the reason I voted for it, though, is that it's a conundrum. Here's the conundrum. We have a $17 trillion debt and people at home tell me you can't give the president a blank check. We just can't keep raising the debt ceiling without conditions. So unconditionally raising the debt ceiling, nobody at home wants me to vote for that and I can't vote for that. But the conundrum is if I don't we do approach these deadlines. So there is an impasse. In 2011, though, we had this impasse and the president did negotiate. We got the sequester. If we were to extend the sequester from discretionary spending to all the entitlements we would actually fix our problem within a few years.

[Posted on 11/19/2013 12:16:51 PM by Third Person]