WASHINGTON – The House will vote Saturday to ensure back pay for furloughed federal workers when the government shutdown ends, Republican leadership said Friday.
House Republicans said at a press conference that they would continue to vote on piecemeal funding bills to individually fund parts of the government. The agenda for Friday: FEMA and the National Weather Service, as a tropical storm makes its way toward the Gulf Coast; and nutrition services for poor women and children, followed by the back pay bill on Saturday.
Shortly after that press conference, the White House issued a veto threat for a number of those bills, calling on the House to pass a clean funding bill for the whole government.
Both sides are digging in, and neither is showing signs of movement.
“This isn’t some damn game,” Speaker John Boehner said angrily at a press conference Friday morning, furiously chucking down a copy of the Wall Street Journal, in which a senior administration official is quoted as saying: “‘We are winning…It doesn’t really matter to us’ how long the shutdown lasts.”
“I reminded the president the other night that he’s famous for saying, ‘Well, you know in a negotiation nobody gets 100 percent of what they want.’ He’s not gonna get it in this one either,” Boehner said.