Government shut down

Government shut down

The deadline passed last night when the two chambers of Congress refused to agree on a spending bill, effectively shutting down the government for the first time in 17 years.

800,000 non-essential federal workers were told to stay home from work today. If the standoff continues, federal employees could be out of work for weeks.

Meanwhile, the Democrats voted last night to give themselves huge subsidies, and the feds will also get overtime pay and pay on Sundays.

House Speaker Senator John Boehner stepped to the mics last night after 1 a.m. to declare he would not accept a “clean cr” (continuing resolution) that didn’t contain language to defund Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Boehner did offer to burn the midnight oil in a conference with the White House and the Senate, but his offer fell on deaf ears.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) reiterated that the Senate would kill any House GOP amendments attached to the spending bill to defund ObamaCare.

“We are not going to mess around with ObamaCare, no matter what they do,” Reid said.

“They should get a life,” he added. “[ObamaCare] is the law, declared constitutional. The exchanges are coming on board tomorrow.”

Just after midnight, a boastful President Obama tweeted: “The Affordable Care Act is moving forward. You can’t shut it down.”

But the launch of ObamaCare open enrollment hit a brick wall when most of the Federal and state insurance marketplace websites crashed and remained offline during the night.

Before the open enrollment, Obama conceded “that there will be glitches” for the first three months.

Obama added that people should “discount all the political talk” and take a look at what is offered before deciding whether it works for them and their families.

But even before the midnight launch of ObamaCare, many Americans said they would refuse to sign up for ObamaCare, and instead they would accept the 1% of income penalty that will be imposed if Americans don’t carry insurance in January 2014.