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On Day 3 of Shutdown, Neither Side Budging in Budget Standoff - New York Times

Posted: 03 Oct 2013 09:03 AM PDT

By JACKIE CALMES and ASHLEY PARKER

Published: October 3, 2013

WASHINGTON — An impassioned President Obama on Thursday kept up the pressure on House Republicans to end the three-day-old government shutdown, appearing at a small construction company outside the capital to challenge Speaker John A. Boehner to quit blocking a vote on federal spending.

"This isn't happening because of some financial crisis. It's happening because of a reckless Republican shutdown in Washington," he said, to cheers and calls of "That's right!" from the assembled construction workers at M. Luis Construction, a company formed by Portuguese immigrants in Rockville, Md., a suburb north of Washington.

"Remember, it was just five years ago that our economy was in a free fall," Mr. Obama said, speaking on the fifth anniversary of Congress's vote to bail out the nearly collapsed financial system. Since then, he said, businesses have added more than 7.5 million jobs, an improving housing market has helped construction companies recover, and auto sales have continued to grow. "We can't afford to threaten that progress right now."

Mr. Obama's appearance came just after the Treasury Department released a report arguing that a default could provoke a recession "comparable to or worse" than the one deepened by the financial crisis of 2008, which was the worst since the Depression.

Besides the well-publicized disruption of the shutdown for tourists, veterans, older people and children in Head Start, Mr. Obama added, "Companies like this one worry that their businesses are going to be disrupted." The federal government provides $1 billion a month in loans to small businesses that now cannot be processed, he said.

"The longer this goes on, the worse it will be," he said. "And it makes no sense. The American people elected their representatives to make their lives easier, not harder."

He told his audience what even House Republicans have acknowledged: that if Mr. Boehner let the Republican-controlled House vote on a measure passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate to continue spending at current levels for two months, it would pass with support from most Democrats and some Republicans. But Republican leaders insist that Mr. Obama must agree to defund or delay his Affordable Care Act.

"Speaker John Boehner won't even let the bill get a yes-or-no vote because he doesn't want to anger the extremists in his party," the president said. If the speaker allows a vote, Mr. Obama added, within minutes "we can get back to the business of helping the American people."

On Wednesday night, after a private meeting among President Obama and four Congressional leaders ended without a break in the budget standoff, House Republicans on Thursday were expected to continue their attempts to pass piecemeal spending bills that would reopen sections of the government, one program at a time.

But Democrats in the Senate have made it clear that they are unlikely to approve any House proposal unless it is a spending bill that would keep money flowing to the government with no strings attached. And since the Republicans have not abandoned their insistence that any budget measure include language defunding the president's health care law, the government shutdown continues.

The White House meeting on Wednesday — which included Mr. Boehner; Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate's top Republican; Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader; and Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader — was described by the Republicans as "polite" but ultimately unproductive.

In an interview earlier on CNBC, Mr. Obama said he would not back down. "As soon as we get a clean piece of legislation that reopens the government — and there is a majority for that right now in the House of Representatives — until we get that done, until we make sure that Congress allows Treasury to pay for things that Congress itself already authorized, we are not going to engage in a series of negotiations."

Mr. Boehner, under pressure from Republican conservatives and outside Tea Party groups, has declined to bring such a continuing resolution to the House for a vote because it would pass mostly with Democratic votes — with some Republicans voting yes — and probably prompt a conservative backlash that could cost him his leadership office.

But frustrations in Congress have grown stronger.

Representatives Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Ron Kind, Democrat of Wisconsin, have been quietly readying a clean spending bill to finance the government for six months that they hope will get bipartisan support. Their proposal includes the repeal of a tax on medical devices, which is unpopular with both parties but which helps pay for the health care law.

Mr. Dent and Mr. Kind, according to an aide, have been talking with moderate House Republicans, hoping to bring them on board. If they are able to get enough Republican support, the aide said, they plan to announce with their bill in a news conference that could come as soon as Thursday.

Some Republicans have urged Mr. Boehner to find a way to reopen the government, and lawmakers who have talked with the speaker said that he broached the idea of a comprehensive deficit-reduction deal that could put to rest three years of gridlock and turmoil in the Republican-led House.

That has all been behind the scenes. In public, there has been no change. That includes Republican efforts to try to finance certain programs — many of them popular — and at the same time embarrass to Democrats who promise to defeat those attempts in the Senate.

On Wednesday, House Republicans successfully passed measures to reopen the national parks, memorials and federal-funded museums; to finance the National Institutes of Health; and to allow the District of Columbia to use local revenue to finance basic services. Democrats signaled that they would reject the measures when they reached the Senate.

The Republicans ran out of time for two other bills — one to restart veterans' programs and another to pay the National Guard and Reserves — but expect to pass them on Thursday.

House Republican aides said that barring any breakthrough, they plan to continue with that strategy and are likely to offer an additional batch of small funding bills on Thursday. One proposal under discussion was a measure to reopen the Head Start programs that serve preschoolers from low-income homes.

Tropical Storm Karen forms in the Gulf of Mexico; hurricane watch from La. to Fla. - CBS News

Posted: 03 Oct 2013 08:01 AM PDT

NEW ORLEANS Preparations began Thursday along the central Gulf Coast as newly formed Tropical Storm Karen threatened to become the first named tropical system to menace the United States this year.

Hurricane and tropical storm watches were posted from southeast Louisiana to Florida and some oil and gas platforms in the storm's projected path were being secured and evacuated.

CBS News weather consultant David Bernard reports that Karen is expected to slow as it approaches the coast, increasing the likelihood of major rains along the Gulf Coast and across the Southeast through the weekend.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Karen was about 485 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River and had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph.

The hurricane watch was in effect from Grand Isle, La., to Indian Pass in the Florida Panhandle. A tropical storm watch also was in effect for parts of the Louisiana coast west of Grand Isle, including the New Orleans area.

East Hurricane SECTOR Visible Image

Hurricane Tracking Sector (VIS) (NOAA)

Karen was moving north-northwest at 12 mph. It could be at or near hurricane strength by Friday, forecasters said.

While meteorologists said it was too soon to predict the storm's ultimate intensity, they said it could weaken a bit as it approaches the coast over the weekend.

"Our forecast calls for it to be right around the border of a hurricane and a tropical storm," said David Zelinsky, a hurricane center meteorologist.

Whether a weak hurricane or strong tropical storm, Karen's effects are expected to be largely the same: heavy rain and the potential for similar storm surge.

Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle, whose barrier island community about 60 miles south of New Orleans is often the first to order an evacuation in the face of a tropical weather system, said the town is making sure its 10 pump stations are ready. He is encouraging residents and clean out drainage culverts and ditches in anticipation of possible heavy rain and high tides.

Otherwise, residents were monitoring the storm and hoping to dodge the foul weather.

"Hopefully, this one is just a little rain event," said Camardelle "We don't need a big storm coming at us this late in the season."

Zelinsky said residents in the warning areas should listen to their local emergency managers for advisories. "Now is the time to begin making preparations," Zelinsky said.

Forecasters said a cold front approaching from the northwest was expected to turn Karen to the northeast, away from the Louisiana coast and more toward the Florida Panhandle or coastal Alabama. But the timing of the front's arrival over the weekend was uncertain.

Grand Isle suffered damage from Hurricane Isaac in August 2012. Isaac clipped the mouth of the Mississippi River for its official first landfall before meandering northwest over Grand Isle and stalling inland. Though a weak hurricane, Isaac's stall built a surge along the southeast Louisiana coast that flooded communities in neighboring Plaquemines Parish.

Mike Steele, a spokesman for the Louisiana Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said a conference call was planned Thursday morning for state and parish officials to discuss the storm.

"Just so we can be in contact and see if there are any needs we can help meet," Steele said.

Karen was expected to pass over Gulf oil and gas fields from Louisiana to Alabama, but early forecasts suggested the storm would miss the massive oil import facility at Port Fourchon, La., just west of Grand Isle, and the oil refineries that line the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge.

Oil giant BP said it has begun securing offshore rigs and evacuating non-essential workers from its four company-operated production platforms in Karen's projected path.

Other oil companies were expected to take similar action.

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Khamis, 3 Oktober 2013