* After day of discord, no action in Senate until
Monday afternoon
* Partisans take to airwaves to pin blame on other
side
* Government shutdown starts midnight on
Monday; troops still to be paid
By David Lawder and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON, Sept 29 (Reuters) - With a
deadline to avert a federal government shutdown
fast approaching, the U.S. Capitol was eerily quiet
on Sunday as Republicans and Democrats waited
for the other side to blink first and break the
impasse over funding.
The Republican-controlled House of
Representatives early on Sunday passed a
measure that ties government funding to a one-
year delay of President Barack Obama's landmark
healthcare restructuring law. Senate Democrats
have vowed to quash it.
If a stop-gap spending bill for the new fiscal year
is not passed before midnight on Monday,
government agencies and programs deemed non-
essential will begin closing their doors for the first
time in 17 years.
In a sign that lawmakers increasingly view that as
inevitable, the House unanimously approved a bill
to ensure that U.S. soldiers would be paid no
matter what happened.
The high-stakes chess match in Congress will
resume on Monday when the Democratic-
controlled Senate reconvenes at 2 p.m. (1800
GMT). Senate Democrats will then attempt to
strip two Republican amendments from the
spending bill: the one that delays the 2010
healthcare law known as Obamacare and another
to repeal a medical device tax that would help
pay for the program.
They would then send a bill with a simple
extension of government spending back to the
House, putting the legislative hot potato back in
Republican House Speaker John Boehner's lap as
the shutdown looms.
"Tomorrow, the Senate will do exactly what we
said we would do and reject these measures,"
said Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid. "At that point,
Republicans will be faced with the same choice
they have always faced: put the Senate's clean
funding bill on the floor and let it pass with
bipartisan votes, or force a Republican
government shutdown."
DEBT LIMIT PRELUDE
The funding standoff is a harbinger of the next
big political battle: a far-more consequential bill to
raise the federal government's borrowing
authority. Failure to raise the $16.7 trillion debt
ceiling by mid-October would force the United
States to default on some payment obligations -
an event that could cripple its economy and send
shockwaves around the globe.
And yet, neither side wants to be the one to cast
the final vote that would lead to a shutdown. Polls
consistently show the American public is tired of
political showdowns and opposed to a shutdown.
There were no signs from Congress or the White
House of last-minute negotiations to resolve the
standoff. Instead, Democrats and Republicans
spent their energies trying to pin blame on the
other side for failing to avoid a calamity.
No lawmakers were seen in or around the Capitol
during daylight hours on Sunday until late
afternoon when 16 House Republican members
held a news conference on the Senate steps to
call on Reid to pass the funding and "Obamacare"
delay measure.
"I personally believe that Senator Reid and the
president, for political purposes, want to shut
down the government. It's a scorched earth
policy," said Representative Tim Griffin, a
Republican from Arkansas.
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer shot back
that the Republican tactics were a "subterfuge"
to avoid blame for a shutdown. "So instead of
continued game-playing, we urge Speaker
Boehner to reconvene the House, pass a clean CR
(continuing resolution) and move on," he said in a
statement.
Boehner and Reid have taken a low profile as the
deadline draws closer, leaving on-camera
appearances to deputies and often speaking
through their press staffs.
One of Boehner's deputies, Representative Kevin
McCarthy, said if the Senate stripped the funding
bill of the "Obamacare" provisions, House
Republicans would simply return it with other
changes to the healthcare law.
"It will be additions that Senate Democrats said
they can support," McCarthy told "Fox News
Sunday," without specifying these "other
options."
The repeal of the medical device tax did win some
Democratic support in the House early on
Sunday.
VETO THREAT
Obama has threatened to veto any bill that delays
his healthcare program.
The funding impasse is the culmination of more
than three years of failed conservative efforts to
repeal "Obamacare," a program aimed at
extending health insurance to millions of those
without coverage.
Republicans argue that the healthcare law, key
parts of which are set to launch on Oct. 1, is a
massive and unnecessary government intrusion
into medicine that will cause premiums to
skyrocket and damage the economy.
And if the battle over "Obamacare" pushes up to
the mid-October deadline to raise the debt
ceiling, U.S. stocks may suffer. When gridlock
threatened a debt default in 2011, the Dow Jones
industrials fell about 2,100 points from July 21 to
Aug. 9, with the market needing two more
months to regain its footing.
Under a government shutdown, more than a
million federal employees would be furloughed
from their jobs, with the impact depending on the
duration of a shutdown.
The current timetable could leave Boehner with
the most difficult decision of his career: whether
to approve a clean continuing resolution the
Senate will likely send it Monday afternoon or
allow the government to shut down for the first
time since late 1995.
In a government shutdown, spending for
functions considered essential, related to national
security or public safety, would continue along
with benefit programs such as Medicare health
insurance and Social Security retirement benefits
for seniors.
But civilian federal employees - from people who
process forms and handle regulatory matters to
workers at national parks and museums in
Washington - would be temporarily out of work.
The last government shutdown ran from Dec. 16,
1995, to Jan. 6, 1996, and was the product of a
budget battle between Democratic President Bill
Clinton and Republicans, led by then-Speaker
Newt Gingrich.
Republicans suffered a public backlash when
voters re-elected Clinton in a landslide the
following November, a lesson never forgotten by
senior Republicans, including Boehner.
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