HOUSE REJECTS SENATE CR; GOVERNMENT ON BRINK OF SHUTDOWN

The House rejected a Senate-passed version of stopgap funding legislation yesterday, moving the government to the brink of a shutdown. Republicans and Democrats remain deadlocked over a House-passed resolution that would delay implementation of President Obama’s health care overhaul, and the latest Continuing Resolution passed by the House adopted language to postpone Obamacare, drawing an immediate rebuke from Senate Democrats, who passed their own version of the CR Friday without the health care language. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called the House action “pointless,” and the Senate will convene this afternoon to likely reject the legislation. If the two sides don’t come to an agreement before the start of Fiscal Year 2014 on Oct. 1, government agencies, including the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration, will shut down. Both CRs limit government spending to an annualized rate of $986.3 billion, which is slightly less than the current, post-sequestration level. DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the NNSA’s nonproliferation program would be limited to spending at approximately FY 2012 levels, though an anomaly allowing the NNSA’s weapons program to spend at the level of the President’s FY 2013 request ($7.58 billion) is being carried over from the CR that funded the government during FY 2013.