GOP Dysfunction, Obstruction & Distraction 'Could Lead to a Government Shutdown'
From environmental and work force regulations to health care and contraception, congressional Republicans are using spending bills to try to dismantle President Obama's policies,setting up a fiscal feud this fall that could lead to a government shutdown.
In the House, one bill prohibits any federal money from being spent on the Affordable Care Act. Funds for the enforcement of new labor rules would be drastically reduced. The main federal family planning program, Title X, would be eliminated. The administration's efforts to impose strict regulations on for-profit universities would be reversed, as would new rules requiring retirement investment advisers to prove they have no financial conflicts of interest.
Another bill, now on the House floor, to fund the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency would stop regulation of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking; prohibit the implementation of carbon emission standards for electric power plants; block new clean water rules; and stop the government's marine and coastal planning efforts to respond to climate change.
Other bills would block the Food and Drug Administration from reviewing e-cigarette marketing and the Federal Communications Commission from carrying out its "net neutrality" regulation of the Internet. A "conscience" rider would allow employers in the District of Columbia to refuse health insurance coverage for any service on moral grounds and to hire and fire based on women's use of health services.
"Frankly, the fall is shaping up to be the most predictable — and, really, avoidable — budget crisis in memory," said Representative Nita M. Lowey of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.
Senior House Appropriations Committee members, including the panel's chairman, Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, have already told Republican leaders that the time to negotiate a way out of the impasse is now, not in the shadow of the papal visit or a government shutdown Oct. 1, said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania and an appropriations subcommittee chairman.
House Republican legislation would either reduce full-day, full-year service for 570,000 young children in Head Start or cut 140,000 children from the program altogether…That bill would also cut $6.4 billion from the president's education spending request, and $370 million from the Pell Grant higher education program. Funding for job training would be almost $500 million less than the White House requested. The National Labor Relations Board's budget would be cut by nearly a third.
Family planning would be all but eliminated. National service programs would be cut 42 percent. The Environmental Protection Agency's operation budget would fall $474 million, or 13 percent. The federal Land and Water Conservation Fund would lose $152 million, or 38 percent. Cuts to the National Park Service as it prepares to celebrate its centennial would delay about 70 percent of its construction projects and more than a third of its repair and rehabilitation efforts.
Mr. Speaker – as GOP Rep. Tom Cole said: "It's not as if the Democrats can be shut out" of the negotiating process. [7/7] It's time to abandon your partisan appropriations bills and sit down with Democrats to prevent another #GOPshutdown that cost our economy $24 billion in 2013.