The Senate voted Tuesday against a House proposal to begin negotiations on a stopgap spending bill, continuing the Congressional ping-pong that resulted in a government shutdown at midnight. 
The Senate Tuesday morning rejected the House’s offer to head to a conference committee to resolve their differences on a stopgap government spending bill after a late night of political ping-pong that resulted in a government shutdown.
The 54-46 vote along partisan lines to table, or reject, the House’s request puts Congress back at square one 10 hours into the first government shutdown in 17 years. Both parties are at an impasse on how to resolve their differences. While the House keeps tacking on amendments to delay or change parts of the Affordable Care Act, which went into effect Tuesday even amid the shutdown, the Senate has swiftly stripped those several times, and shows no signs of continuing to do anything different.
The big question now is: who will blink?
The Republican conference in the House is showing signs of fracturing, but not nearly enough for Boehner to carry a deal himself.
And Barack Obama has threatened to veto any bill that touches Obamacare.
The House will return soon after the Senate, when the drama will continue.
On Tuesday’s The Daily Rundown, some politicians sounded optimistic a shutdown would be short-lived while everyone assigned blame.
On the Senate floor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pointed fingers at Democrats in Congress as culpable, though Quinnipiac polling out this morning shows that more than two to one, voters oppose shutting down the government over Obamacare.
“They’re doing this because they’d rather see the government shut down than do anything to protect the American people from the consequences of Obamacare,” said McConnell.
Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said, “I hope and pray this gets resolved today. We’re setting a really bad example for others around the world.”
Republican Policy Chair James Lankford said he didn’t know of any new offer on the table, but that he thought the GOP proposals yesterday were “quite reasonable.”
