The Greenville News - Area GOP Lawmakers Say Budget Talks Productive

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By Mary Orndorff Troyan

Congressional leaders remain gridlocked over how to end the government shutdown, but Upstate Republicans say productive talks are taking place behind the scenes among the GOP's rank and file.

Reps. Trey Gowdy of Spartanburg, Jeff Duncan of Laurens and Mick Mulvaney of Indian Land are among arch-conservative lawmakers who voted more than a week ago -- with other Republicans -- for legislation that linked continued government operations to delaying or defunding the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

But nine days into the shutdown, there are signs that even the most conservative Republicans are tiring of that strategy.

"The way it should be done is the way we're doing it now, just not during a shutdown," Gowdy said in an interview this week.

He still opposes the health care law, but said the time to amend it was earlier this year, when Congress should have been debating a fiscal 2014 spending bill to finance health care programs.

Gowdy said he's had emotional conversations with frustrated constituents, and he's sympathetic. One emailed him from Normandy, France, saying a World War II veteran from Tennessee had been denied entrance to the American cemetery at Normandy because of the shutdown.

"You sit there and think, 'We are really letting you down. You fought for us and because of my dysfunction you can't even get in to see the grave sites,'" Gowdy said.

"My colleagues might say you don't have to shut down the monuments... but that doesn't make the people impacted feel better. That's more D.C. brinkmanship and gamesmanship."

Mulvaney has abandoned hopes of repealing the Affordable Care Act as part of legislation to finance the government. Instead, he's looking for a deal to better manage the long-term drivers of the nation's debt: entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

"There have been some good discussions about what conservatives could support in terms of short-term solutions , medium-term solutions, and longer-term solutions," Mulvaney said Wednesday.

During a telephone town hall last week, Mulvaney said he polled constituents on the idea of compromise because he assumes that's how the shutdown will end. But only 30 percent of the more than 1,500 people polled favored a compromise between Republicans and Democrats.

"That was stunning to me that that's where people were," Mulvaney said.

Half of those polled said Republicans should stand firm, and 20 percent wanted Democrats to prevail by reopening government with no changes to the health care law.

Also Wednesday, the CEO of Heritage Action for America told reporters his organization continues to insist that the health care law be defunded.

"The only acceptable way out of this is some sort of deal that funds the federal government without funding Obamacare," Michael Needham said.

Mulvaney said Needham's stance is unpersuasive to him and his Republican colleagues on the Hill.

"That is their political fund-raising and activism wing, and I respect that," Mulvaney said.

"They're raising money off of this. That's what they do. But they're in no position to run the country. I am. Michael Needham can say all he wants that it's defund or nothing, but that was never, ever, ever, ever, going to happen after the election."

Duncan hasn't given up on dismantling the health care law, but is starting to consider alternatives.

"I still hold out hope we can defund it. That's what we really want," he said. "At a minimum, let's delay it for average Americans, but that's the worst-case scenario."

Gowdy said he'd support reopening the government if it includes a provision that prevents members of Congress and their staffs from keeping their government subsidy when they move to the insurance exchanges created under the 2010 law.

Mulvaney said he wants a stopgap spending bill to delay, for one year, the health care law's core requirement that people obtain health insurance.

Such positions are less sweeping than proposals to defund or repeal the law.

"It seems the points of differences and distinction are becoming narrower and narrower," Gowdy said.

All three Upstate congressman expressed frustration that Obama and Senate Democrats have rejected House GOP bills that would reopen individual government agencies as part of a piecemeal strategy.

But they hope the parallel debates over the shutdown and the looming deadline to raise the nation's debt ceiling lead to an even larger deal on federal spending.

"The only time (Obama) will talk to us is when we do this," Mulvaney said.

The trio said the government won't default on its debt on Oct. 17, the deadline Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has given for when the government reaches the debt ceiling, because the administration could prioritize payments to make interest payments on the debt.

But they said they don't want to test how such a historic breach of the debt limit would affect the overall economy.

"It is serious and we shouldn't find out who is right and who is not," Gowdy said.

"We should raise the debt ceiling if it also includes a way to deal with the root problem," Mulvaney said.

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