Senators are scheduled to act Friday by holding a series of votes shortly after midday to end formal debate on the spending bill. If the current plan holds, Senate Democrats will vote to amend the bill to restore funding for the new federal health-care law and send it back to the House.
Republicans there are vowing to reject the restoration of funding for the health-care law, commonly known as Obamacare, and may opt to send the bill back to the Senate again with more changes. But with the government shutdown hanging in the balance, House leaders had not yet signaled early Friday how they will proceed.
Capturing the sense of uncertainty gripping Capitol Hill, Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black called on lawmakers Friday during his opening prayer to "keep us from shackling ourselves with the chains of dysfunction," adding later: "Lord, deliver us from governing by crisis, empowering us to be responsible stewards of your bounty."
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) launched the Senate proceedings by making no formal statements, saying he would leave it to others to speak before the final votes.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) likened the mood to scenes from the movie "High Noon."
"I hope the good guys win," he said. "I hope reason and judiciousness and a sense of a responsibility to the people of this country prevail and not some knee-jerk reaction to what a few people in the House of Representatives want to do to our government."
Over in the House, GOP leaders were expected to use a series of votes Friday morning to once again gauge the mood of their rank-and-file before determining how to proceed.
Boehner and his leadership team revealed the first steps of their proposed plan on Thursday by urging conservatives to shift their assault on the health-care law to the coming fight over the federal debt limit.
That would allow lawmakers in the meantime to try to reach an agreement on a plan to fund federal agencies into the new fiscal year, which begins Tuesday, and avoid a shutdown.
But about two dozen GOP hard-liners rejected that approach, saying they would not talk about the debt limit until the battle over government funding is resolved.
"Quite frankly, I think that's primarily where we need to be putting our attention," said Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), who has led the drive in the House to use the threat of a shutdown to defund Obamacare.
Late Thursday afternoon, Boehner convened an emergency meeting of his leadership team to try to hash things out. They emerged with no answers, and no clear path forward for any piece of legislation, either to keep the lights on in Washington or to make sure the Treasury Department can continue to pay the nation's bills by raising the borrowing limit.
