John Boehner doesn't want the bill in his chamber at midnight. Neither does Harry Reid. Either way, they are no closer to a deal. 
Just hours away from Monday’s midnight deadline, Congress is no closer to a deal to avert a government shutdown.
The game now: hot potato.
Neither side — the House and Senate — wants to be left holding the bag when midnight strikes. Senate Democrats are running down the clock before sending the House a bill that would fund the government through November 15 without touching Obamacare. House Republicans could try to send back yet another stopgap funding bill with changes to Obamacare, in hopes of putting the onus back on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Regardless of whose court the ball is in at the deadline, the result will be the same if they can’t reach a deal: the government shutters.
In the latest development, several reports Monday afternoon suggested that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was exploring a one-week continuing resolution to avert a shutdown in the hopes the GOP and Democrats might reach a deal in that timespan.
“Despite the Democrats’ refusal to work with the House to solve the problem, Republicans are working to protect the troops, prevent a shutdown and find solutions to the difficulties caused by Senate Democrats’ delays,” a spokesman for McConnell, Don Stewart, told MSNBC when asked about the possibility of a temporary CR.
But a Democratic Senate aide told MSNBC that it was a “nonstarter,” both because House Republicans would likely reject it, and because the current shutdown debate is already over a stopgap measure that would only fund the government for six weeks.
“It’s hard to see what would change a week from now,” a second Senate Democratic aide said.
Confirming their suspicions, conservative Republicans in the House quickly shot down the idea they might support a one-week CR.
“I’m not inclined to support that, no,” Congressman Tom Price of Georgia told reporters. “It doesn’t make any progress in the right direction.”
House Speaker John Boehner condemned the Senate for refusing to meet earlier than this afternoon: “The Senate decided not to work yesterday. If it’s such an emergency, where are they?”
“There is the thinking if you feed the beast they will be satisfied, but the opposite is true,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a member of the House Democratic leadership, told reporters at a breakfast Monday morning.
And no one on Capitol Hill seems to know what the endgame will be.
“I have no idea what will happen,” GOP Rep. Ted Poe of Texas said on Monday morning. ”There’s been no decisions made on what happens when we get the Senate’s version back.” Outside Washington, markets are already nervous that a shutdown is on the horizon, with the Dow Jones dropping triple digits on Monday morning.
Boehner could try to buy more time by putting forward a stopgap budget of a few days or a week without the Obamacare changes that his caucus is demanding. But that could trigger a revolt from the right flank that’s led the charge against the president health-care law, and House Democrats might not be willing to bail the GOP out.
One thing seems certain, though: Regardless of whether or not there is a government shutdown after midnight, enrollment in Obamacare’s health-care exchanges will begin tomorrow, putting the centerpiece of the law into effect.
When asked how House Republicans would deal with that reality, Poe demurred. “We’ll just have to deal with that when tomorrow comes,” he said.
