Seth Waugh, the EANGUS Director of Government Relations, was at the World War II Memorial along with other Associations that make up The Military Coalition. Through EANGUS, the State Associations have a voice on a national level.
The House GOP met this morning and Speaker Boehner spoke to the media (this occurred shortly after The Military Coalition Press Conference). Boehner has been working to get votes for a House proposal all morning that would reopen the government and extend the debt ceiling.
Senate Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell had halted their negotiations to allow Boehner to play his hand out on his side of the government. Assuming that the House had passed its bill, the Senate would reject the bill through a procedural maneuver where they will amend the House bill, by removing the House language and inserting the Senate deal negotiated by Reid and McConnell (this is done to side-step the rule/ law that requires all spending bills to originate in the House of Representatives).
To the best of our knowledge, the Senate deal thus far is the following:
1) A debt limit increase through Feb 7th, 2014 – this date however will likely be pushed out to closer to the middle of 2014 once the Treasury Department uses its “extraordinary measures” to extend things;
2) Funding at the $986.3 billion spending level through Jan 15th with some degree of re-programming authority pre-arranged in case the second round of sequester are allowed to go into effect. If they go into effect it would reduce spending to $967 billion;
3) Yet another agreement to re-enter into a longer-term fiscal negotiation process with a end of the year (Mid December) deadline for the negotiations; and
4) income verification for Obamacare subsidy recipients.
In the end, from what we are hearing, this whole thing will be over on Thursday and signed into law by the President.
The Guard & Reserve drill pay is still sitting in the Senate. Unfortunately Reid will not allow anything out of the Senate at this time without the President’s blessing, and POTUS has yet to give the blessing on Guard & Reserve pay.
