House GOP to offer own shutdown plan -- with Obamacare changes

WASHINGTON --  House Republicans, moving to get ahead of a developing bipartisan proposal in the Senate, plan to move their own measure Tuesday to end the standoff over the federal budget.


The House plan would include stronger measures targeting President Obama's healthcare law, but still represents a major scaling back of GOP demands and may draw opposition from the most conservative Republicans in the chamber.

House Speaker John A. Boehner was to outline the plan in a meeting of the Republican majority Tuesday morning.

The proposal would accept key parameters of the emerging Senate deal - reopening the federal government by extending current spending levels through mid-January, and raising the nation's debt limit through February.

But the House plan would add tweaks to the Affordable Care Act. Rather than delay a new tax opposed by labor unions, as the Senate plan would do, the House would delay for some time a tax on medical devices that the law imposes on manufacturers.

Like the Senate plan, the House would add an income verification requirement for customers who buy insurance through the new online marketplaces set up by the health law.

It would also seek to end the government's payment of its traditional employer's share of health-insurance premiums for members of Congress and administration officials, who are now required to purchase medical insurance through new exchanges. Democrats have previously rejected that idea, which is popular among Republican activists.

For more on this LA Times story, click here.