Republican-Controlled House Approves Deal To Raise Debt Limit, End Shutdown – Gets Less Than Zero In Return -- Pat Dollard.com

Excerpted from Fox News: The House voted Wednesday to approve a short-term bill ending the partial government shutdown and raising the debt ceiling, sending the deal to the president’s desk and capping one of the most bitter and brutal political fights in recent memory.

The bill cleared the House on a 285-144 vote, lifted over the finish line by a large chunk of Democrats. All House Democrats voted in favor of the bill and 87 Republicans did as well. 144 Republicans voted against it.
The Senate, where the plan originated, earlier voted 81-18 for the bill.

The result will come as a relief to furloughed federal workers, but leaves unfinished any long-term agreement over the nation’s fiscal future. As with past 11th-hour deals, this one kicks off the tough decisions to a separate committee and sets up another set of deadlines.

Lawmakers could again be at loggerheads by mid-January.

After weeks of wrangling on the Hill, though, the bill passed Wednesday after House Republican leaders backed down on their demands that the legislation rein in ObamaCare.

To the dismay of many conservatives, the final product does not include any major provisions pertaining to the health care law. But, with the House a day earlier unable to muster support for an alternative GOP plan, House leaders agreed to go along with the bipartisan Senate bill.

President Obama, speaking between the two sets of votes, said he would sign the bill “immediately” and “immediately” begin reopening parts of the government that were closed.

He called on both sides of the aisle to work together in the future on a range of issues, including stalled immigration legislation. “We’ve got to get out of the habit of governing by crisis,” he said.

The bill puts an end, for now, to the historic showdown that has kept the government partly shuttered for more than two weeks. Putting additional pressure on lawmakers to reach an agreement, Congress was facing a Thursday deadline to raise the debt ceiling.

“We fought the good fight. We just didn’t win,” House Speaker John Boehner said in an interview with Cincinnati radio station WLW-AM ahead of the vote.

The final bill will fund the government through Jan. 15, and raise the debt cap through Feb. 7. Plus it provides back-pay for furloughed workers.

The plan does not include any provision relating to the ObamaCare medical device tax or other unpopular parts of the law, as prior plans did; instead it would include a single provision meant to verify the income of those receiving ObamaCare subsidies. It would also instruct a bipartisan budget committee to report back on a broader plan by mid-December.

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