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The White House rejected a Republican plan to reopen portions of the US government yesterday as the first shutdown in 17 years closed landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and threw hundreds of thousands of federal employees out of work. The back and forth offered no sign that President Barack Obama and Republicans can soon end a standoff over health care that has sidelined everything from trade negotiations to medical research and raised new concerns about Congress’s ability to perform its most basic duties.
The Republican plan would restore funding for national parks, veterans services, and the District of Columbia. Other government services would remain unfunded.
While the selective funding approach appeared to unite conservative and moderate Republicans for now, the White House said Obama would veto it.
Democrats who control the Senate said they would reject it before it reached Obama’s desk.
Republicans who control the House of Representatives said Obama could not complain about the impact of the shutdown while refusing to negotiate. “The White House position is unsustainably hypocritical,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.
The partial shutdown meant that 800 000 “non-essential” workers were forced to remain home yesterday.
The Republican-controlled House has passed two spending bills in recent days, both of which have been rejected by the Democrat-led Senate.
House Republicans asked for a conference on the budget with the Senate, but the upper house of Congress killed that proposal when it met yesterday morning.
Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said that he would not negotiate as long as the House linked the budget law to the healthcare law.
Yesterday’s Senate vote was the fourth time since this political battle began that the body had rejected a House Republican bill or proposal.
Some critical parts of the government, including the military and air traffic control, will remain open. The shutdown will, however, keep hundreds of thousands of federal workers at home and unpaid.
It could affect government services including park management, food assistance for children and pregnant women and federal home loan programmes. Federal agencies, such as NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and others, were also affected.
In an earlier statement, Obama spoke bluntly about House Republicans: “You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job, for doing what you’re supposed to be doing anyway, or just because there’s a law there that you don’t like.”
Speaking of the healthcare law that undergoes a major expansion on Tuesday, he said: “That funding is already in place. You can’t shut it down.”
The Republican speaker of the House, John Boehner, responded a few hours later on the House floor. “The American people don’t want a shutdown and neither do I,” he said. However, he added, the new healthcare law was having “a devastating impact . . . something has to be done”.
House Republicans have sought a year’s delay in a requirement in the healthcare law for individuals to buy coverage.
However, in recent days several Republican senators and House members have said they would be willing to vote for straightforward legislation with no healthcare-related provisions.
The last shutdown, in the winter of 1995-96, severely damaged Republican election prospects.
Stock markets around the world reacted resiliently to the shutdown on Tuesday morning, with analysts saying significant damage to the US economy was unlikely unless the shutdown lasted more than a few days.
After falling the day before the US shutdown deadline, European stocks mostly recovered. In Asia, stocks were mixed, while Wall Street was expected to open slightly higher.
Meanwhile, Obama has postponed a visit to Malaysia due to the US government shutdown, Prime Minister Najib Razak said yesterday.
Obama was set to visit Malaysia for an address scheduled for 11 October as part of a four-country swing through Southeast Asia including international summits in Indonesia and Brunei.
It is not immediately clear whether the budget crisis in Washington will affect the rest of the US president’s long-planned trip to Asia.
State news agency Bernama and other media outlets quoted Najib as saying Obama’s trip was now off.
He would send Secretary of State John Kerry to Malaysia in his place, reports said.
“Obama expressed his disappointment that he was unable to visit Malaysia as scheduled,” Najib was quoted as saying by the Malaysian Insider news website.
“However, the Secretary of State John Kerry will come . . . as Obama’s representative.”
A spokesperson in Najib’s office confirmed the reports, saying Kerry would step in for Obama during his planned speech at an entrepreneurs summit in Kuala Lumpur on 11 October, but declined further comment.
The US president was also due to attend back-to-back summits of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) bloc on the Indonesian island of Bali and an East Asia summit in Brunei next week.
The Philippine government refused to comment on whether a planned stop by Obama in Manila would be affected.
“As of yesterday, the trip was still proceeding and pushing through. But given the situation [in the United States] we would certainly understand if they had to cancel,” Philippine government spokesperson Ricky Carandang said.
The White House has not yet announced any changes to Obama’s travel plans.
White House spokesperson Jay Carney on Tuesday said: “We have no changes to announce to the president’s schedule.” – AFP
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