This is why the GOP might force a shutdown?

[Venonat]

Really... a government shutdown because of this? You have got to be kidding me.

Defunding Planned Parenthood, gutting the EPA and more: The bottom-line demands that House Republicans are making

By Peter Finocchiaro

It's high noon on Capitol Hill. After five-and-a-half months of stopgap measures and temporary compromises to keep the government funded, House Republicans now insist that the buck (literally) stops on April 8. That, according to Majority Leader Eric Cantor is when the GOP will allow the government to shut down partially unless its specific budget demands are met.

What stands in the way of compromise now isn't so much a dollar figure -- Democrats' and Republicans' proposals are reportedly a mere $6 billion apart -- but a set of more than five-dozen amendments that Republicans have attached -- "policy riders." By definition, a rider is an amendment unrelated to the bill at hand.

The House GOP, which includes dozens of members elected last fall with Tea Party support, is using the budget resolution riders to pursue broad policy goals -- like gutting the healthcare reform law passed last year, or stripping Planned Parenthood of its federal funding. Numerous House Republicans are insisting that the riders must be included in the final federal budget, or else they'll oppose it. This sets up a potential showdown with the Democratic-controlled Senate, which seems open to compromise -- but unwilling to sign off on all of the House GOP's demands.

Republicans have approved several amendments aimed at reducing funds for environmental regulation, including a good dozen focused specifically on declawing the Environmental Protection Agency. These amendments would:

• Return funding for the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Registry to 2008 levels, cutting expenditures by $8.4 million. The Registry collects data on industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
  
• Block funding for the EPA to regulate waste from coal combustion.
  
• Bar federal funding for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
  

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Edited April 7, 2011 by Venonat

[Wookietim]

Really... a government shutdown because of this? You have got to be kidding me.

To be honest, it seems that the GOP simply wants to defund every single good thing that the govt does. But hey - this is what you get when the country listens to the Tea Party : A bunch of barely literate yokels running around with way too much power.