Washington - Conservative House Republican will review a plan on Wednesday to split the U.S. debt-limit matter from the federal shutdown in White House talks, lawmakers said.
The rank-and-file strategy, conflicting with House GOP leadership plans to broaden the debate beyond funding the Affordable Care Act to other spending areas, will be a major topic at Wednesday's Republican Study Committee meeting, the lawmakers said.
Funding the government and raising the debt ceiling "don't need to be tied together," study committee Chairman Steve Scalise, R-La., told Politico. "The debt ceiling will have to be dealt with, but it's got to be dealt with in a way that also puts reforms into place."
The strategy meeting of some 170 conservative GOP House members will be held eight days before the October 17 date the Treasury Department says it will reach the debt limit.
The government has been partly shut down since October 1.
"It's keeping the focus on Obamacare, which is the face of spending and bigger government," Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., told Politico of the strategy to re-separate the two issues, which have come together as the October 17 deadline has neared.
"That's our focus. I think we need to keep the debt ceiling and the [stopgap continuing resolution to fund the government until December 15] separate. I don't think they need to be morphed into each other. I think for the discussion we're better served if they stay separate," he said.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who has been leading the move to broaden the discussion with the White House and Senate Democrats, had no immediate comment on the plans of his conservative rank-and-file colleagues.
The Republican-led House on Tuesday passed a bill to fund the Head Start Program for low-income children and their families as part of a weeklong strategy to pass targeted-spending bills in an attempt to reopen parts of the shuttered government.
The bills so far have been rejected by Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama.
Some Democrats have accused Republicans of using the mini-spending bills to stall action on the budget and debt ceiling in a dangerous game of brinkmanship as the nation moves closer to October 17.
Obama said on Tuesday he would not negotiate over the essential act of raising the nation's debt limit or offer concessions to the House to finance and reopen the government.
But in a news conference he raised the possibility of reopening the government and raising the debt limit in the short term to allow negotiations.
"Reopen the government, extend the debt ceiling," Obama said. "If they can't do it for a long time, do it for the period of time in which these negotiations are taking place."
He said Congress has a constitutional responsibility to both finance the government and keep it solvent, and once the House acts, he will talk. – SAnews.gvo.za-UPI
