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BRADENTON – The House and Senate failed to make any progress Monday as the final chance to strike a deal to avert a government shutdown approached. Just hours before the deadline, the House passed yet another budget bill linking an increase in the debt ceiling to delays in the Affordable Care Act.
The Senate quickly rejected the bill. President Obama scolded House Republicans for an act he called "entirely preventable."
The bill passed 228-201 in the House, while the Senate voted 54-46 to kill it.
The language of the bill demanded a one-year delay in the ACA’s individual mandate, while also requiring that every member of Congress, their staff, the President, Vice President, and executive branch staff forgo their federal government employee coverage and instead purchase unsubsidized insurance from the new exchanges.
President Obama said Republicans should not make ideological demands in exchange for keeping the federal government open, and said a shutdown would be harmful to millions of Americans.
“One faction of one party in one house of Congress in one branch of government doesn’t get to shut down the entire government,” President Obama was reported to have said while talking to reporters at the White House. “You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job.”