The Washington Post reports that the “House passes stopgap funding to avert federal shutdown“:
The House on Tuesday approved a stopgap measure that would keep the federal government funded through March 18 and cut $4 billion in spending by targeting programs that President Obama has already marked for elimination.
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The proposal, which passed the House on a 335-to-91 vote, now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to pass easily. The Senate has set a vote on the bill for 11 a.m. Wednesday; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Tuesday that Senate Democrats support the measure….
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All but six Republican House members voted in favor. Among the Republicans opposing it was Rep. Steve King (Iowa). King tweeted Tuesday afternoon that he would vote no because it would not eliminate funding for the national health care law and would not include an amendment proposed by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) that would bar federal funding of Planned Parenthood.
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The other five Republicans opposing the measure were Reps. Louie Gohmert (Texas), Justin Amash (Mich.), Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Ron Paul (Texas) and Walter Jones (N.C.).
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House Democrats were divided on the measure: 104 Democrats backed it while 85 opposed it. Two members of Democratic leadership, Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (Conn.) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.), voted yes; House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Assistant Minority Leader Jim Clyburn (S.C.) and Democratic Caucus Vice-Chairman Xavier Becerra (Calif.) voted against it.
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Ahead of the final vote, Democrats offered a motion that would have ended subsidies to oil companies. The measure failed on a 176-to-249 vote, with all but 13 Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans voting “no”.
Meanwhile, Dan Froomkin at the Huffington Post reports “Raucous first caucus for House Tea Partiers Exposes Dangerous Rifts“:
A boisterous first meeting of the House’s Tea Party Caucus on Monday night exposed two potential rifts — one between its members and state-level Tea Party activists, who have no appetite for compromise, and another between its members and Republican Party leaders, who will soon be asking them to do just that.
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Tea Party leaders from Virginia, Florida and Pennsylvania hotly demanded that the members of the caucus not settle for anything less than defunding the Obama health care law, even on a very short-term basis, attendees told the Huffington Post. They also scoffed at the new Republican target of $61 billion in budget cuts from the rest of this fiscal year, calling it insufficient. And they made it clear Republicans who don’t stand firm will face primary opponents in 2012.
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Incremental Progress at the National Sausage-Making FactoryPost + Comments (48)