House Votes 285 to 144 for Senate Bill

This was quicker than I thought. But the House had to get out of town for another week vacation. All Democrats voted to open the government while the majority of the Republican Caucus voted against.

What is interesting is that the Senate bill contains the McConnell idea from the last Fiscal Cliff that the President can raise the debt ceiling by himself and then Congress must vote to prohibit him. This would get round all the 14th Amendment issues we have discussed before. However, no one quite knows whether this disappears as law with the next debt ceiling. 

What Democrats rejected in the Senate bill was McConnell's idea that department heads can use discretion how to make sequestration cuts. The reason Democrats rejected it was that this would make it too easy to keep sequestration in place during the next budget.

Final reminder of the night. This was an absolutely unnecessary government shutdown that affected millions of people and it was engineered by the GOP during wartime. The idea that 18 Republican Senators actually voted to default and plunge the world economy into a death spiral is horrifying. 

Congratulations to the Democrats for maintaining their unity against intense provocation and President Obama for not yielding and maintaining his cool.