House readies vote to fund government, gut Obamacare

By Michael O’Brien , Political Reporter, NBC News

The House wrapped up debate and stood poised to pass legislation on Friday to keep the government open past Sept. 30, but also to eliminate funding for "Obamacare."

With just days to go before the deadline at which the government will run out of money -- causing a myriad of federal services to cease -- the Republican-controlled House passed legislation which President Barack Obama has already said he would veto.

If no resolution is reached, a shutdown threatens to harm the economy and place scores of government workers out of work for an undetermined period of time. Wall Street appeared unconcerned by the developments, though, expecting lawmakers to reach an 11th-hour accord as they have in virtually every previous showdown.

Still, Friday's vote set up a tense series of negotiations between Obama, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate over the next 10 days. The House has canceled a planned recess next week in anticipation of the frenetic work it will take to cobble together a compromise to keep the government open that can win the support of Congress.

The vote was set for late morning, and was expected to pass only with the votes of Republicans.

As the GOP readied the vote, Obama traveled to Kansas, where he was expected to sharply denounce the GOP's approach to the fiscal impasse.

"The last thing we can afford right now is a decision by a minority of Republicans in Congress to throw our economy back into crisis by refusing to pay our country's bills or shutting down the government," said a White House official. "Instead of playing politics with the economy, Republicans in Congress should join the president to focus on creating a better bargain for the middle class."

The action will next play out in the Senate, where Democrats command a majority of votes. The upper chamber is expected to strip any measure to undermine the Affordable Care Act from the House-passed bill, though that has invited a filibuster threat from some hard-lined conservative senators.

But if history is any guide, several Senate Republicans -- at least 13 of whom have openly disparaged the effort to use the threat of a government shutdown as leverage to defund Obamacare -- may work to assemble a compromise spending measure to send back to the House. That could provide the contours of an eventual agreement.

Still looming, though, is the more politically-tricky prospect of having to authorize increased government borrowing -- known as the debt limit -- sometime next month. Republicans met Friday morning to discuss their strategy in that fight, and have long signaled they might seek a more modest, one-year delay of "Obamacare" in exchange for raising the debt limit.

Related:

This story was originally published on Fri Sep 20, 2013 10:27 AM EDT