GOP offers to reopen NIH as shutdown goes into Day 3

The House moved to restart funding for the National Institutes of Health and some other popular government services Wednesday, but Republican and Democratic congressional leaders left the White House later without any path forward to end the government shutdown entering its third day.

The House of Representatives passed separate spending bills to fund the NIH, the National Park Service and the District of Columbia in a piecemeal approach to reopen some areas of government. The measures were likely to go nowhere as the White House insisted that the Republicans agree to fund the government without delaying or eliminating parts of the healthcare reform law.

"The president made clear to the leaders that he is not going to negotiate over the need for Congress to act to reopen the government or to raise the debt limit to pay the bills Congress has already incurred," said a White House summary of the meeting. "The president reinforced his view that the House should put the clean government funding bill that has been passed by the Senate up for a vote a bill that would pass a majority of the House with bipartisan support."

The votes were the second attempt by House Republican leaders to take a piecemeal approach at reopening the federal government since Tuesday, when the House's Democratic minority blocked three bills that sought to reopen the nation's parks and museums and fund the Veterans Affairs Department and the government of Washington, D.C.

The American Public Health Association opposed the spending bill that would fund NIH's activities for 2014 but not address other critical federal agencies. Although the NIH funds important medical research that the organization strongly supports, funding for agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Resources and Services Administration is also essential to saving lives, Dr. Georges Benjamin, the APHA's executive director, said in a statement.

“Congress should instead focus its efforts on ending the government shutdown and putting an end to the senseless cuts to nondefense discretionary programs through sequestration to ensure all of our nation's public health agencies and programs are adequately funded,” Benjamin said.

Also Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he had sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in which the Nevada Democrat offered to appoint conferees to a conference committee between the two chambers if the House would pass a clean spending bill. Boehner rejected the offer, according to reports.

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