Chaos on Capitol Hill: 'It's a Street Fight up There'

Chaos on Capitol Hill: 'It's a Street Fight up There'

on Sat, 28 Sep 2013

House Republican leadership is floating as many ideas as they can to try to get a deal done to keep the government open, Breitbart News has learned.

The National Review’s Robert Costa Tweetedthat House Speaker John Boehner “is doing everything (defund! delay! repeal!) to show Cruz bloc he's w/ them on principle. But, as ever, he still has to govern.”

“Aides to conservative House Rs tell me their bosses won't accept any CR that doesn't defund or delay; that's [Republican leadership's] reality,” Costa added in another Tweet.

House GOP leadership previously floated David Vitter's (R-LA) amendment--which would eliminate the Obamacare exemption for members of Congress and their staffs--as a compromise. However, at a GOP conference meeting convened around 8:30 p.m. tonight, sources tell Breitbart News the Vitter amendment was not discussed. Costa noted on Twitter: “Everyone going thru motions on vote, but [GOP leadership] inner circle looking at next step.”

A top conservative strategist told Breitbart News that a group of movement leaders had a Saturday evening conference call where they planned to remind GOP members that their base is expecting them to stand strong against Obamacare.

“House needs to completely defund Obamacare, not one penny to Obamacare,” the strategist said in an email. “If so groups would reluctantly live with a one year no funding deal, but it has to fully defund all aspects of Obamacare. A delay without defund or if House funds it in any capacity, then all hell is going to break loose.”

One GOP source told Breitbart News that the package being voted on Saturday night will contain a “one year delay of 2014 taxes,” a “one year delay of existing taxes,” a “one year delay of all ACA [Affordable Care Act] cuts,” a “one year delay of provisions going into effect [from Obamacare] from Oct. 1, 2013 to Dec. 31, 2014,” and certain “conscience protections.”

The specifics of the deal are not yet clear, nor are the details of how any deal would play out in the Senate.

A conservative strategist who spoke to Breitbart News on the condition of anonymity said that conservative activists and members would not accept anything short of a one-year defund and delay of Obamacare. Nonetheless, he said, Capitol Hill is in disarray. “It is a street fight up there right now,” he said. “We are hearing that it could be just delay but still funding, or possibly amendments that make it easy for Reid and Senate to throw out defunding.”

One House GOP staffer told Breitbart News that “this is the way the system is supposed to work.” “The Founders gave the House the power of the purse to keep the rest of the government from misbehaving because we have to get re-elected every two years,” that staffer said. “No one else does.”