http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2013/10/12/food-stamp-debit-cards/2972713/

( " Glitch " resolved , potential for chaos recognized by congress I'm sure... )

People in 17 states found themselves unable to buy groceries with their food stamp debit-style cards Saturday after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure.

Xerox announced late in the evening that access had been restored for users in the 17 states affected by the outage, hours after the first problems were reported.

"Re-starting the EBT system required time to ensure service was back at full functionality," spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer said in an email.

Xerox spokeswoman Karen Arena told USA TODAY that some Electronic Benefits Transfer systems were experiencing connectivity issues after a routine test of a backup system at a location in the Midwest caused an outage at about 10 a.m. ET. The test was part of a regular maintenance schedule, Arena said.

Xerox started receiving calls soon afterward.

U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage was not related to the federal government shutdown. Xerox runs EBT card systems for 17 states. All were affected by the outage.

Ohio's cash and food assistance card payment systems went down at 11 a.m., said Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Shoppers left carts of groceries behind at a packed Market Basket grocery store in Biddeford, Maine, because they couldn't get their benefits, said fellow shopper Barbara Colman, of Saco, Maine. The manager put up a sign saying the EBT system was not in use. Colman, who receives the benefits, called an 800 telephone line for the program and it said the system was down due to maintenance, she said.

"That's a problem. There's a lot of families who are not going to be able to feed children because the system is being maintenanced," Colman said. "No one should put maintenance in during the daytime."

She planned to reach out to local officials.

"I'm trying to reach out to everybody because I'm not thinking of me an adult who can figure out things. I'm thinking of the simpler person in the world who is sitting there trying to just do basic shopping to feed their kids. You don't want children going hungry tonight because of stupidity," she said.

Colman said the store manager promised her that he would honor the day's store flyer discounts next week.

Illinois residents began reporting problems with their cards — known as LINK in that state — on Saturday morning, said Januari Smith, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Human Services.

Smith said that typically when the cards aren't working retailers can call a backup phone number to find out how much money a customer has available in their account. But that information also was unavailable because of the outage, so customers weren't able to use their cards.

In Clarksdale, Miss. — one of the poorest parts of one of the poorest states in the nation — cashier Eliza Shook said dozens of customers at Corner Grocery had to put back groceries when the cards failed Saturday because they couldn't afford to pay for the food. After several hours, she put a sign on the front door to tell people about the problem.

"It's been terrible," Shook said in a phone interview. "It's just been some angry folks. That's what a lot of folks depend on."

Mississippi Department of Human Services director Rickey Berry confirmed that Xerox, the state's EBT vendor, had computer problems. He said he had been told by midafternoon that the problems were being fixed.

"I know there are a lot of mad people," Berry said.

Sheree Powell, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, started receiving calls around 11:30 a.m. about problems with the state's card systems. More than 600,000 Oklahomans receive SNAP benefits, and money is dispersed to the cards on the first, fifth and 10th days of every month, so the disruption came at what is typically a high-use time for the cards.

Oklahoma also runs a separate debit card system for other state benefits like unemployment payments. Those cards can be used at ATMs to withdraw cash. Powell said Xerox administers both the EBT and debit card systems, and they both were down initially.

Like Ohio's Johnson, Powell said that Oklahoma's cash debit card system has since been restored, but the EBT cards for the SNAP program were still down. Powell said Oklahoma's Xerox representative told them that the problems stemmed from a power failure at a data center, and power had been restored quickly.

"It just takes a while to reboot these systems," she said, adding that she did not know where the data center was located.

Powell said that some grocery store cashiers had been speculating that the federal government's shutdown caused the problem, but state officials have been assured that that is not the case.

"We are hopeful it will be up this afternoon but we were not given a specific time frame," she said.

David Akerly, a spokesman for Michigan's Department of Human Services, also confirmed that residents in his state have reported problems using their cards.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-12/foodstamp-nation-turmoil-ebt-system-goes-dark-glitch-blamed

( As Congress remains in deadlock , looks like someone decides to take more hostages... )

Foodstamp Nation In

Turmoil: EBT System Goes

Dark, "Glitch" Blamed

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/12/2013 17:03 -0400

fixed

Michigan

NASDAQ

New Normal

Ohio

Oklahoma

In the past five years it has become apparent that America can survive a near-fatal financial system collapse, an economy teetering on the edge and kept ticking only thanks to the Fed's now perpetual QE, a collapsing standard of living for everyone but the wealthiest 0.1%, declining wages, zero interest rates, surging food, energy, rent, tuition and welfare costs, and pretty much everything else, as long as the welfare state keeps humming along. Any be welfare state we mostly mean providing the daily bread to the nearly 50 million Americans living in poverty and surviving only thanks to the only thing to have exploded to epic record highs under Obama (in addition to the Fed's balance sheet of course):foodstamp usage. However, the true stability of the US may be tested very soon following reports that due to a "possible computer glitch" the Electronic Benefits Transfer System, aka EBT, ala Foodstamps, is offline. Cue mass panic among the best-weaponized population in the world. Naturally, this latest fiasco involving a country that has grown accustomed to sucking on the government's teat was immediately blamed on a "glitch" - just like everything else that is slowly but surely breaking in the New Normal.

CBS reports:

Reports from around the country began pouring in around 9 a.m. on Saturday that customers’ EBT cards were not working in stores. The glitch, however, did not appear to be part of the government shutdown. At 2 p.m., an EBT customer service representative told CBS Boston that the system was currently down for a computer system upgrade.

The representative said the glitch is affecting people nationwide.She could not say when officials expected the system to be restored.

People calling the customer service line were being told to call back later.

State officials said they were preparing a statement to further explain the issue.

The federal EBT website was unavailable due to the government shutdown.

AP adds:

People in Ohio, Michigan and several other states found themselves unable to use their food stamp debit cards on Saturday, after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. Shoppers from Maine to Oklahoma had to abandon baskets of groceries because they couldn't access their benefits.

Ohio's cash and food assistance card payment systems went down at 11 a.m., said Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Ohio's cash system has been fixed, however its electronic benefits transfer card system is still down. All states that use Xerox systems are affected by the outage.

Xerox spokeswoman Karen Arena confirmed via email Saturday afternoon that some EBT systems are experiencing temporary connectivity issues. She said technical staff is addressing the issue and expects the system to be restored soon.

As a reminder, this is how many Americans and households were on foodstamps as of the most recent monthly update (hint: a record).

Xerox Statement on Temporary EBT Systems Outage

During a routine test of our back-up systems Saturday morning, Xerox’s Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system experienced a temporary shutdown. While the system is now up and running, beneficiaries in the 17 affected states continue to experience connectivity issues to access their benefits. This disruption impacts EBT beneficiaries who rely on the system for SNAP and WIC. Technical staff is addressing the issue and expect the system to be restored soon. Beneficiaries requiring access to their benefits can work with their local retailers who can activate an emergency voucher system where available. We appreciate our clients’ patience while we work through this outage as quickly as possible.

In short: Cue panic, because while the Nasdaq may be down for 3 hours and only a few vacuum tubes would notice, take down EBT, and you will have a full-fledged revolution in no time.

Via Twitchy....

NOBODIES EBT CARD IS GOING THRU AT WALMART

3:47 PM - 12 Oct 2013

EBT cards in many states aren’t working today, and as you might expect, some Walmart shoppers aren’t very happy.

"@Creamteam_bitch: Government done shut down the #EBT cards in Ga... These folks going crazy in walmart lol"swearrrr

4:21 PM - 12 Oct 2013

Walmart just made an announcement on the intercom that EBT for the state of Georgia is down...there are now full carts Left everywhere #awk

3:40 PM - 12 Oct 2013

Walmart is in here announcing they not taking EBT due to state wide issues 😩 ppl in here PISSED! Lol

2:14 PM - 12 Oct 2013

in Huntsville Alabama,they are refusing ebt/food stamp cards at walmart. my daughter works there and says it's getting really bad

2:00 PM - 12 Oct 2013

Senate rejects plan for debt limit deal

POSTED AT 2:31 PM ON OCTOBER 12, 2013 BY JAZZ SHAW

Most of the talk on the cable gab festivals regarding shutdown mania has focused on the interplay between House Speaker John Boehner and the President. And rightly so, since all spending bills really are supposed to originate in the House. (Of course, there are little tricks they can use in the Senate to get around inconvenient facts like the Constitution.) But the upper chamber began making noises about taking matters into their own hands this week.

“It’s been clear to me for a while we can’t wait for the House to save us,” said Richard Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Senate Democrat. “We have to find our own bipartisan path forward, and we haven’t done that yet.”

The emerging Senate talks have been focusing on a plan from Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, which faces obstacles in both parties and both chambers of Congress.

Today, they decided to take it for a test spin. A fresh proposal to extend the debt cap – at least for a little while – was brought to the floor. So how did that work out for ya?

Democratic leaders in the Senate are rejecting an offer by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to end the budget impasse, arguing it asks for too much in return for too little, senators and aides tell POLITICO.

The development comes on the same day that the Senate voted 53-45 to block a Democratic bill that would raise the debt ceiling through 2014 without any spending cuts or changes to Obamacare.

So basically there aren’t sixty votes out there to end debate on anything which involves essentially a blank check for the federal government. It makes you wonder if they could pull this off even if the House did manage to put a similar package together. The current projection we’re hearing from the Hill holds that the witching hour is going to arrive on Thursday. At that point, choices will have to be made as to what gets paid and what doesn’t. The chief danger here is that the GOP will have virtually nothing to say about those decisions. The White House will have direct control over which checks get written and you don’t need a magic eight-ball to predict where the pain will be “equally distributed” if it comes to that.

But is there some way around it at this late date which is politically viable and could attract the required votes? I certainly don’t see one.

Here's When The US Government Will Really Run Out Of Cash

STEVEN PERLBERG OCT. 12, 2013, 7:26 AM 931 1

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has warned us that the U.S. would hit the debt ceiling on October 17 — the date at which Treasury will cease to issue debt.

However, many confuse this with the day the U.S. runs out of cash and the government defaults.

Here is Goldman Sachs' Alec Phillips explained earlier this month:

Since the Treasury usually aims to run a cash balance large enough to cover unexpected payment needs or a revenue shortfall, the Treasury expects to have $30bn on hand the day it exhausts its borrowing capacity. The Treasury views this $30bn as the minimum prudent balance in light of the significant uncertainty in daily cash flows, though there have been a few instances (unrelated to the debt limit) in which the cash balance has dipped below $15bn. Most external projections of the debt limit deadline focus on when this cash is depleted. Our own estimate implies that the Treasury could conceivably continue to make its scheduled payments until the end of October. However, the Treasury’s cash balance is likely to be so low after about October 25 that, depending on revenue fluctuations, the cash balance could be depleted on any day. At that point, it is possible that the Treasury would need to cease making payments in order to conserve the little remaining cash they would still have on hand.

This isn't to say markets wouldn't react on October 17, but it does mean the politicians have a few days of extra wiggle room to strike a seemingly inevitable deal.

Goldman Sachs

http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-meets-with-congress-on-saturday-2013-10

OBAMA: It's A Bad Idea To 'Kick The Debt Ceiling Can Down The Road'

STEVE HOLLAND AND ROBERTA RAMPTON, REUTERS OCT. 12, 2013, 8:14 AM 203

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

The cars of members of Congress, including one (L) belonging to a member of the Maryland delegation, fill the parking lot outside the House of Representatives during a Saturday session at the U.S. Capitol in Washington October 5, 2013.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama pressured Republican lawmakers on Saturday to agree to raise the U.S. debt ceiling for longer than they would prefer, as their fiscal impasse dragged into the weekend with five days left to find a deal.

The budget battle between Obama and Republicans who control the House of Representatives has idled hundreds of thousands of government workers hit by a 12-day government shutdown and put the United States at risk of a historic debt default, possibly by next Thursday, unless the borrowing limit is raised.

With the potential of an economic calamity looming, Obama and his Republican opponents are trying to agree on how long to extend the debt ceiling, with Republicans wanting to limit the extension to six weeks to try force more concessions out of the president.

Obama made clear in his weekly address Saturday that he wants a longer debt ceiling extension to get the U.S. economy through the holiday shopping season without a convulsive shock. Republicans want a commitment to broader deficit-reduction talks from the White House.

"It wouldn't be wise, as some suggest, to kick the debt ceiling can down the road for a couple of months, and flirt with a first-ever intentional default right in the middle of the holiday shopping season," Obama said.

While Obama's talks with House Republicans on Thursday and Senate Republicans on Friday were seen as a constructive sign of progress, there appears to be still a ways to go and many details to iron out before a deal can be clinched.

North Dakota Republican Senator John Hoeven said there are enough ideas being discussed to get to an agreement, but the key now is finding the right combination of them that can pass both the House and Democratic-controlled Senate.

"I do think it's going to take a few days here to get that right combination, but I'm hopeful we'll get a deal," Hoeven told Reuters.

He said Republicans are willing to lift the debt ceiling and end the shutdown but want to make sure that government spending is cut - something they have been trying to negotiate with the White House for months without success.

"I want to see the government get opened and I want to see a debt-ceiling solution. But we've got to use this time as well to find some savings and reforms, and we are talking about what savings and reforms we can get people to agree to," he said.

Republicans have been knocked on their heels by polls showing Americans largely blame them for triggering the crisis, a political dynamic that has strengthened Obama's hand. The president has been unyielding in his insistence that he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling.

Obama told Americans that his Republican opponents are manufacturing a crisis that has the potential for damaging the U.S. credit rating and causing global markets to go haywire.

"Our government is closed for the first time in 17 years. A political party is risking default for the first time since the 1700s. This is not normal. That's why we have to put a stop to it," he said.

House Republicans will meet at the Capitol on Saturday morning to discuss their options after sending the White House a proposal that included the short-term increase in the debt limit that would clear the way for re-opening the government.

The House Republican proposal called for cuts in entitlement programs like the Medicare health plan for seniors to replace two years of the automatic spending cuts known as "sequestration" agreed to last year by Congress, senior congressional aides said.

California Republican Representative Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in the Republican weekly address that his party is standing on some important principles.

"It's about stemming the tide of debt and deficits that threatens to wash out an entire generation's opportunities," he said.

President and Dems and Senate say no to short term debt hike ...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-12/senate-rejects-clean-debt-extension-through-2014

Senate Rejects Clean 2014 Debt Extension Along Party Lines

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/12/2013 12:39 -0400

Debt Ceiling

White House

As was largely expected, the Senate cloture vote to extend the debt ceiling through the end of 2014, has failed to pass along party lines, or 53-45.

BREAKING: Senate rejects Democratic plan to extend debt ceiling through next year.

12:34 PM - 12 Oct 2013

Hardly a ringing endorsement that negotiations in the Senate are running any more smoothly than in the House.

Following the vote, the Senate goes into recess and Democrats are going into a private meeting even as Reid has said he will reject McConnell's offer which is contingent on negotiations. From Politico:

Democratic leaders in the Senate are rejecting an offer by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to end the budget impasse, arguing it asks for too much in return for too little, senators and aides tell POLITICO.

The development comes on the same day that the Senate voted 53-45 to block a Democratic bill that would raise the debt ceiling through 2014 without any spending cuts or changes to Obamacare.

The Collins plan, which was drafted with input from West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D) and other senators, called for a six-month extension of government funding and a debt limit increase through January. But it asked for a delay in Obamacare’s medical device tax for two years and a requirement for income verification for Obamacare subsidies.

While it would give federal agencies more flexibility to work within the constraints of the automatic sequestration cuts, Democrats objected to the level of funding that Collins was seeking, which would lock-in the levels under the sequester at $967 billion next year, far too low for many Democrats.

Moreover, Democrats are calling for a longer-term budget deal that would raise the debt ceiling and extend government funding. And they said that agreeing to a shorter-term budget deal and a lower funding level — with a handful of changes to Obamacare — was asking too much after they have called for a “clean” increase to the $16.7 trillion national debt ceiling and a stop-gap measure to keep the government running.

This means that there is little time for the two sides to reach a deal — and the talks may now shift to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to try to find a way out of the crisis now that the House Republicans have hit an impasse with the White House. Reid and McConnell met Saturday morning.

And now, with the House Republicans out of the negotiation as Harry Reid noted previously, the final chance is that Senate Republicans and the White House/Democrats finds some common ground a la the Fiscal Cliff negotiation.

It appears that any hope of a Monday morning resolution has just been dashed, and once again it will be up to the wire, or perhaps beyond it (if Goldman's observations that 2013 is different), depending on just how much of a motivating factor the market is.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/328189-obama-pans-short-term-debt-ceiling-hike

President Obama signaled Saturday that he wouldn't accept the Republicans' offer for a short-term increase in the nation's debt limit.

"It wouldn’t be wise, as some suggest, to just kick the debt ceiling can down the road for a couple months, and flirt with a first-ever intentional default right in the middle of the holiday shopping season," Obama said in his weekly address.

"Because damage to America’s sterling credit rating wouldn’t just cause global markets to go haywire; it would become more expensive for everyone in America to borrow money. Students paying for college. Newlyweds buying a home," he said.

House Republicans have offered a six-week increase in the debt limit. If adopted, the plan will buy time for broader negotiations over entitlement spending and taxes, they say.

Obama claimed that the damage to interest rates from failing to pass a long-term debt ceiling hike would create a "Republican default tax" on families and businesses.

"Manufacturing crises to extract massive concessions isn’t how our democracy works, and we have to stop it," Obama said. "Politics is a battle of ideas, but you advance those ideas through elections and legislation – not extortion."

and....

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/328005-reid-pans-six-week-debt-deal

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Friday rejected the House Republican proposal for a six-week increase in the debt limit.

“They’re talking about extending the debt ceiling for two months or six weeks — please,” Reid said Friday. “We do not believe a six-week delay of a catastrophic default is enough time to give the economy the confidence it needs.”

House Republicans on Thursday presented President Obama an offer to raise the debt-ceiling for six weeks in order to avoid a default. The president didn't say "yes or no," according to Republicans, and the two sides are in negotiations over an agreement that might also reopen the government.

Treasury and the White House have warned that if the limit is not lifted by Oct. 17, the government could default on its debt, leading to a recession.

Republicans have proposed a short-term debt ceiling extension to allow time to negotiate spending cuts in exchange for a larger debt-limit increase. Reid opposes a short-term extension because he said it would cause another crisis at Christmas time.

Reid has set up a vote on a “clean” debt-ceiling bill that would allow the government to continue to borrow money through the end of 2014, but Republicans have rejected that proposal, saying they want major spending cuts and entitlement reform before they’ll agree to increasing the debt limit by another $1 trillion.

Reid said that if Congress allows the government to default on its debt, the world could go into a deep recession.

“This is my opinion: if we allow the United States to default on its debt for the first time in its glorious history it will be a black mark ... and will spark a global recession,” Reid said on the Senate floor.

Senate Republicans are meeting with the president on Friday to discuss a possible way forward.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he hoped the meeting at the White House was more productive than the last.

"If all the president wants is to drag us over there to say he won’t negotiate, that won’t be productive," McConnell said.

The United States will hit the debt ceiling and begin defaulting on its bills on Thursday, according to the Treasury Department.

House GOP meets Saturday morning to see where things stand.....

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-12/no-deal-boehner-says-obama-rejects-proposals-not-negotiating

"No Deal" - Boehner Says Obama Rejects Proposals, Not Negotiating; Talks At An Impasse

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/12/2013 10:55 -0400

After a two-day, five hundred point Dow Jones rally on nothing but hope that just because politicians are talking, all shall be well, it was the weekend's turn, when the market is conveniently closed, for true Congressional colors to emerge. Sure enough, moments ago Boehner told GOP lawmakers that Obama has "rejected our deal", and that talks with the president have hit an impasse. The WSJ, whose recent poll in conjunction with NBC found Republican approval rating at an all time low (because if the debt ceiling slams shut, the machinery that funds both the "wealth effect" for the 0.01% and the 60 million on foodstamps and disability will cease: or in other words a bust for the ultra wealthy and poor, if not quite so bad for what's left of the middle class) reports that his comments, in a closed-door meeting with House Republicans, put renewed focus on a plan being developed by Senate Republicans to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and fully reopen the government. As we speculated, Obama, smelling blood, has decided to shut down the GOP on all their demands: "On Saturday, a House GOP aide said Mr. Obama had essentially rejected everything offered by House Republican leaders in their proposal." Which is hardly a negotiation. The question is will the GOP, having pushed the country so far, decide to back off now, and let Obama take all the spoils?

As also reported previously, house lawmakers portrayed their talks with the White House more negatively than the picture that had emerged on Friday, after Mr. Obama phoned Mr. Boehner to discuss a proposal that House Republicans presented late Thursday. The White House said Mr. Obama had "concerns'' about the plan but that the two sides had agreed to keep talking.

Mr. Boehner told GOP lawmakers he was now waiting for Mr. Obama to re-engage with the House leadership, said Rep. Richard Hudson (R., N.C.). "The president will have to come to the table with something,'' said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.). "All eyes are now on the Senate. The question is what will Senate Republicans do.''

And while in the Senate the prevailing GOP sentiment is one of folding to Obama as well, Darrell Issa most recently noted that Obama has rejected the Senate GOP offer as well which he said "contains real reform", instead pushing merely for higher taxes.

So while Obama seems dead set on getting his way or the highway, all the momentum for late last week appears to have stalled, perhaps directly as a result of the massive ramp in the stock market which once again may have come too early, taking away all the pressure from the negotiation, which now appears set to repeat the tried and true pattern of yet another market plunge whose only goal is to force the negotiators to sign in the 11th hour.

And speaking of 11th hour, it may just be revisited, since as Bloomberg reported, after today there are no votes scheduled until 6:30 pm on Monday, roughly two days before the first X-Date.

Hold the optimism: Why a shutdown settlement might not be near

BY BYRON YORK | OCTOBER 12, 2013 AT 7:14 AM

TOPICS: BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL

Press reports are filled with expressions of optimism that the government shutdown and coming debt limit showdown will soon be resolved. Certainly many Republican senators, who hope to play a now-it's-time-for-the-adults-to-take-charge role in the crisis, are suggesting a deal is possible not only to end the shutdown but also to head off a possible default -- and it could all happen in the course of a few days.

The problem is, such a deal would be possible only if the conservative Republicans who have so far dictated the GOP's actions in the House are somehow taken out of the picture. Those Republicans have been unyielding in their demand that President Obama offer a concession imposing some significant new limits on Obamacare. And Obama has been equally unyielding in his refusal to offer any such concession.

That is an unresolvable conflict. And so far there is no sign it has changed.

A proposal by Republican Sen. Susan Collins that has been the subject of much discussion would include two proposals relating to Obamacare: 1) it would repeal the law's medical device tax; and 2) it would require verification that people who receive subsidies under Obamacare are actually eligible to receive those subsidies. Both have widespread Republican support, and in another set of circumstances would pass easily. But neither has been sufficient, at least so far, to satisfy the Republicans who originally sought to defund Obamacare, and later sought to delay it for a year, and then later sought to delay the law's individual mandate.

In their view, the entire Obamacare crusade has been about giving the American people relief from the health care plan's burdens and mandates. Neither element of the Collins proposal would do that. While they would be fine in any other context, the defunders were willing to shut down the government to stop, or substantially slow, Obamacare, and neither Collins proposal would do that.

But still -- given the pressures created by the partial government shutdown and the polls showing the damage it has done to the public's opinion of Republicans -- would Collins' Obamacare plan give the defunders a fig leaf, a way to say they stood up for changes in Obamacare and won? Probably not. The feeling among at least some of the defunders is that they have not come this far just to surrender in exchange for a fig leaf. And that is before one considers the big question of whether President Obama would accept any version of the Collins proposal in the first place.

So far, House Speaker John Boehner has deferred to the wishes of the defunders at nearly every significant point in the shutdown process. Most recently, he agreed to offer a clean, or relatively clean, debt limit extension that would avert a default crisis so that the fight over a continuing resolution that limits Obamacare could go on. If Boehner continues to show the defunders great deference, it is unlikely there will be a settlement soon.

The short version: If the defunders are still in control, there will be no deal. because when it comes to Obamacare, they would not accept anything Obama would offer, and Obama would not offer anything they would accept.

For there to be a deal, Boehner would have to say to the defunders: We tried it your way, it didn't work, and now we need to move on. There are plenty of Republicans in the House, not to mention Democrats, who would vote to go along with the Senate and pass a settlement of some sort. But for that to happen, Boehner would have to abandon the very people who have been most influenced his decision-making so far. So far, that hasn't happened.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/328185-house-gop-powwows-as-debt-limit-looms

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Saturday morning is set to brief House Republicans on the status of negotiations with the White House to end the government shutdown and lift the debt ceiling.

Congressional leaders left the Capitol on Friday evening with no agreement to resolve the standoff, just six days before the Treasury Department says the debt ceiling will be reached and warns of an unprecedented U.S. default.

President Obama has not agreed to the latest Republican offer of a short-term increase in the debt ceiling and two-pronged set of negotiations to reopen the government and enact a broader fiscal package including entitlement and tax reforms.

“I hope that the White House continues to evaluate the offer that we made, and we remain hopeful that there is intent on both sides to resolve the impasse,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said as he left the Capitol on Friday.

Boehner would not comment. He spent about an hour eating Chinese food and kibitzing with fellow House Republicans in a smoke-filled room in the Capitol before departing for the evening.

He spoke by phone with Obama earlier Friday afternoon, but a spokesman, Michael Steel, would not provide details of the call.

“They agreed that we should all keep talking,” Steel said.

Another Boehner spokesman, Kevin Smith, said it was likely the Speaker would simply be updating House Republicans on the state of play during a conference meeting Saturday morning, rather than outlining a new plan or agreement.

House leaders have made no effort to move forward on a proposal for a six-week debt ceiling increase that they proposed to their members on Thursday morning. The House is scheduled to vote Saturday morning on unrelated legislation, while the Senate plans to hold a procedural vote on a Democratic plan to lift the debt ceiling through 2014, which most Republicans oppose.

At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney said Obama had "some concerns" about the GOP's latest proposal, and he signaled Obama would not support a plan that tied only a short-term increase of the debt ceiling to a broader budget negotiations.

Doing so, Carney said, would "put us right back where we are now," creating another potential standoff, this time just before the winter holidays.

He said that while Obama would be still willing to sign a clean debt increase independent of other negotiations, that Democrats wouldn't sign off on a plan that set up a similar "dynamic" in a month and a half.

The shutdown begins its 12th day with House and Senate Republicans struggling to get on the same page about their demands for ending the fiscal crisis.

Senate Republicans have reacted coolly to the House GOP proposal, but in a Friday meeting at the White House, Obama did not embrace a competing plan from Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that would renew government funding and lift the debt ceiling in exchange for a repeal of the medical device tax in the healthcare law.

GOP lawmakers in both chambers said there was confusion and frustration about the party’s strategy.

"There's plates spinning everywhere. Everybody's now trying to work on this," said Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a member of House GOP leadership. "It's just confusing to try to figure out what's the deal that's actually getting traction."

At one point, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), was asked his opinion of the Senate GOP’s plan. “I don’t know what it is,” he replied.

Still, there were signs of increased coordination between the two chambers. The second-ranking Senate Republican, John Cornyn (Tex.), entered Boehner’s office for a meeting Friday afternoon. “Just call me Solomon,” he quipped to reporters.

Catharsis Ours

Saturday, October 12, 2013