US braces for prolonged government shutdown

Democrats in the US House of Representatives rejected a Republican measure to keep national parks open during a partial government shutdown which began Monday midnight.

The measure required a two-thirds majority for passage but that did not materialize. It received only 252 votes in favor and 176 opposed.

House leadership aides however say they will bring up the same measures again Wednesday in a way that would require only a simple majority to pass, according to The Washington Post. But the White House has promised a veto even if the new Republican plan passes.

Also Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said the strategy is “just another wacky idea by tea party Republicans.”

The GOP is trying to condition any continued funding of the government with the elimination or at least the delay of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare.

The US government has begun its first partial shutdown in 17 years after the two houses of the Congress failed to agree a new budget. The president’s new healthcare reform program lied at the heart of the differences.

President Obama said the government shutdown is only “about rolling back our efforts to provide health insurance to folks who don’t have it. This, more than anything else, seems to be what the Republican Party stands for these days. I know it’s strange that one party would make keeping people uninsured the centerpiece of their agenda, but that apparently is what it is.”

Obamacare remains unpopular, but polls suggest that the idea of closing the government to stop it is even more so.

Goldman Sachs has warned that a three-week shutdown could shave as much as 0.9 percent from US gross domestic product, GDP, this quarter.

Obama, who blames the House for the stalemate, says he will “keep working to get Congress to reopen the government [and] restart vital services.”