Impeachment hearings go live on TV with first witnesses

WASHINGTON — The closed doors of the Trump impeachment investigation are swinging wide open.

When the gavel strikes at the start of the House hearing Wednesday morning, America and the rest of the world will have the chance to see and hear for themselves for the first time about President Donald Trump’s actions toward Ukraine and consider whether they are, in fact, impeachable offenses.

It’s a remarkable moment, even for a White House full of them.

All on TV, committee leaders will set the stage, then comes the main feature: Two seasoned diplomats, William Taylor, the graying former infantry officer now charge d’affaires in Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary in Washington, telling the striking, if sometimes complicated story of a president allegedly using foreign policy for personal and political gain ahead of the 2020 election.


So far, the narrative is splitting Americans, mostly along the same lines as Trump’s unusual presidency. The Constitution sets a dramatic, but vague, bar for impeachment, and there’s no consensus yet that Trump’s actions at the heart of the inquiry meet the threshold of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Whether Wednesday’s proceedings begin to end a presidency or help secure Trump’s position, it’s certain that his chaotic term has finally arrived at a place he cannot control and a force, the constitutional system of checks and balances, that he cannot ignore.

The country has been here just three times before, and never against the backdrop of social media and real-time commentary, including from the president himself.


“These hearings will address subjects of profound consequence for the Nation and the functioning of our government under the Constitution,” said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee leading the inquiry, in a memo to lawmakers.

Schiff called it a “solemn undertaking,” and counseled colleagues to “approach these proceedings with the seriousness of purpose and love of country that they demand.”

“Total impeachment scam,” tweeted the president, as he does virtually every day.

Impeachments are rare, historians say, because they amount to nothing short of the nullification of an election. Starting down this road poses risks for both Democrats and Republicans as proceedings push into the 2020 campaign.

Unlike the Watergate hearings and Richard Nixon, there is not yet a “cancer on the presidency” moment galvanizing public opinion. Nor is there the national shrug, as happened when Bill Clinton’s impeachment ultimately didn’t result in his removal from office. It’s perhaps most like the partisanship-infused impeachment of Andrew Johnson after the Civil War.

Trump calls the whole thing a “witch hunt,” a retort that echoes Nixon’s own defense. Republicans say Democrats have been trying to get rid of this president since he first took office, starting with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference to help Trump in the 2016 election.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was initially reluctant to launch a formal impeachment inquiry. As Democrats took control of the House in January, Pelosi said impeachment would be “too divisive” for the country. Trump, she said, was simply “not worth it.”

After Mueller’s appearance on Capitol Hill in July for the end of the Russia probe, the door to impeachment proceedings seemed closed.

But the next day Trump got on the phone.

For the past month, witness after witness has testified under oath about his July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and the alarms it set off in U.S. diplomatic and national security circles.

In a secure room in the Capitol basement, current and former officials have been telling lawmakers what they know. They’ve said an earlier Trump call in April congratulating Zelenskiy on his election victory seemed fine. The former U.S. reality TV host and the young Ukrainian comedian hit it off.

But in the July call, things turned.

An anonymous whistleblower first alerted officials to the phone call. “I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 election,” the person wrote in August to the House and Senate Intelligence committees. Democrats fought for the letter to be released to them as required.

“I am deeply concerned,” the whistleblower wrote.

Trump insisted the call was “perfect.” The White House released a rough transcript. Pelosi, given the nod from her most centrist freshman lawmakers, opened the inquiry.

“The president has his opportunity to prove his innocence,” she told Noticias Telemundo on Tuesday.

Defying White House orders not to appear, witnesses have testified that Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was withholding U.S. military aid to the budding democracy until the new Ukraine government conducted investigations Trump wanted into Democrats in the 2016 election and his potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter.

It was all part of what Taylor, the long-serving top diplomat in Ukraine, called the “irregular” foreign policy being led by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, outside of traditional channels.

Taylor said it was “crazy” that the Trump administration was withholding U.S. military assistance to the East European ally over the political investigations, with Russian forces on Ukraine’s border on watch for a moment of weakness.

Kent, the bowtie-wearing State Department official, told investigators there were three things Trump wanted of Ukraine: “Investigations, Biden, Clinton.”

On Friday, the public is scheduled to hear from Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who told investigators she was warned to “watch my back” as Trump undercut and then recalled her.

Eight more witnesses will testify in public hearings next week.

“What this affords is the opportunity for the cream of our diplomatic corps to tell the American people a clear and consistent story of what the president did,” said Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., a member of the Intelligence panel.

“It takes a lot of courage to do what they are doing,” he said, “and they are probably just going to be abused for it.”


Republicans, led on the panel by Rep. Devin Nunes, a longtime Trump ally from California, will argue that none of those witnesses has first-hand knowledge of the president’s actions. They will say Ukraine never felt pressured and the aid money eventually flowed, in September.

Yet Republicans are struggling to form a unified defense of Trump. Instead they often fall back on criticism of the process.

Some Republicans align with Trump’s view, which is outside of mainstream intelligence findings, that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election interference. They want to hear from Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a gas company in Ukraine, Burisma, while his father was the vice president. And they are trying to bring forward the still-anonymous whistleblower, whose identity Democrats have vowed to protect.

The framers of the Constitution provided few details about how the impeachment proceedings should be run, leaving much for Congress to decide. Democrats say the White House’s refusal to provide witnesses or produce documents is obstruction and itself impeachable.

Hearings are expected to continue and will shift, likely by Thanksgiving, to the Judiciary Committee to consider actual articles of impeachment.

The House, which is controlled by Democrats, is expected to vote by Christmas.

That would launch a trial in the Senate, where Republicans have the majority, in the new year.

/atm

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

GOP split over impeachment pushback as Dems plow ahead

WASHINGTON — The president’s lawyer insists the real story is a debunked conspiracy theory. A senior White House adviser blames the “deep state.” And a Republican congressman is pointing at Joe Biden’s son.

As the Democrats drive an impeachment inquiry toward a potential vote by the end of the year, President Donald Trump’s allies are struggling over how he should manage the starkest threat to his presidency. The jockeying broke into the open Sunday on the talk show circuit, with a parade of Republicans erupting into a surge of second-guessing.

At the top of the list: Rudy Giuliani’s false charge that it was Ukraine that meddled in the 2016 elections. The former New York mayor has been encouraging Ukraine to investigate both Biden and Hillary Clinton.

“I am deeply frustrated with what he and the legal team is doing and repeating that debunked theory to the president. It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again,” said Tom Bossert, Trump’s former homeland security adviser. “That conspiracy theory has got to go, they have to stop with that, it cannot continue to be repeated.”

Not only did Giuliani repeat it Sunday, he brandished pieces of paper he said were affidavits supporting his story.

“Tom Bossert doesn’t know what’s he’s talking about,” Guiliani said. He added that Trump was framed by the Democrats.

Senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, meanwhile, noted that he’s worked in the federal government “for nearly three years.”

“I know the difference between whistleblower and a deep state operative,” Miller said. “This is a deep state operative, pure and simple.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, heatedly said Trump was merely asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to root out corruption. That, Jordan said, includes Hunter Biden’s membership on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv. There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either of the Bidens.

Mixed messaging reflects the difficulty Republicans are having defending the president against documents released by the White House that feature Trump’s own words and actions. A partial transcript and a whistleblower complaint form the heart of the House impeachment inquiry and describe Trump pressuring a foreign president to investigate Biden’s family.

In a series of tweets Sunday night, Trump said he deserved to meet “my accuser” as well as whoever provided the whistleblower with what the president called “largely incorrect” information. He also accused Democrats of “doing great harm to our Country” in an effort to destabilize the nation and the 2020 election.

Trump has insisted the call was “perfect” and pushed to release both documents.

“He didn’t even know that it was wrong,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, describing a phone call from Trump in which the president suggested the documents would exonerate him.

But Democrats seized on them as evidence that Trump committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” by asking for a foreign leader’s help undermining a political rival, Democrat Joe Biden. Pelosi launched an impeachment inquiry and on Sunday told other Democrats that public sentiment had swung behind the probe.

By all accounts, the Democratic impeachment effort was speeding ahead with a fair amount of coordination between Pelosi, Democratic messaging experts and its political operation.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday that he expects the whistleblower to testify “very soon,” though details were still being worked out and no date had been set. Hearings and depositions were starting this week. Many Democrats are pushing for a vote on articles of impeachment before the end of the year, mindful of the looming 2020 elections.

Schiff said in one interview that his committee intends to subpoena Giuliani for documents and may eventually want to hear from Giuliani directly. In a separate TV appearance, Giuliani said he would not cooperate with Schiff, but then acknowledged he would do what Trump tells him. The White House did not provide an official response on whether the president would allow Giuliani to cooperate.

Lawyers for the whistleblower expressed concern about that individual’s safety, noting that some have offered a $50,000 “bounty” for the whistleblower’s identity. They said they expect the situation to become even more dangerous for their client and any other whistleblowers, as Congress seeks to investigate this matter.

On a conference call Sunday, Pelosi, traveling in Texas, urged Democrats to proceed “not with negative attitudes towards him, but a positive attitude towards our responsibility,” according to an aide on the call who shared the exchange on condition of anonymity. Polling, Pelosi said, had changed “drastically” in the Democrats’ favor.

A one-day NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted Sept. 25 found that about half of Americans — 49% — approve of the House formally starting an impeachment inquiry into Trump.

There remains a stark partisan divide on the issue, with 88% of Democrats approving and 93% of Republicans disapproving of the inquiry. But the findings suggest some movement in opinions on the issue. Earlier polls conducted throughout Trump’s presidency have consistently found a majority saying he should not be impeached and removed from office.


House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries of New York urged the caucus to talk about impeachment by repeating the words “betrayal, abuse of power, national security.” The Democrats’ campaign arm swung behind lawmakers to support the impeachment drive as they run for reelection, according to another call participant to spoke on condition of anonymity.

The contrast with the Republicans’ selection of responses was striking.

A combative House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said that nothing in Trump’s phone call rose to the level of an impeachable offense.

“Why would we move forward on impeachment?” the California Republican said. “There’s not something that you have to defend here.”

Bossert, an alumnus of Republican George W. Bush’s administration, offered a theory and some advice to Trump: Move past the fury over the 2016 Russia investigation, in which special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of conspiracy but plenty of examples of Trump’s obstruction.

“I honestly believe this president has not gotten his pound of flesh yet from past grievances on the 2016 investigation,” Bossert said. “If he continues to focus on that white whale, it’s going to bring him down.”

Two advisers to the Biden campaign sent a letter Sunday urging major news networks to stop booking Giuliani on their shows, accusing Trump’s personal attorney of spreading “false, debunked conspiracy theories” on behalf of the president.

The letter to management and anchors of shows at ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, MSNBC, CNN and Fox News added: “By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation.”

/atm

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Trump economic agenda likely checked by Democratic election gains

WASHINGTON, United States – Against the backdrop of a strong economy, Republicans avoided blowout losses in the key US midterm vote but President Trump’s economic agenda will be sharply curtailed by Democratic gains.

With a divided Congress starting next year, and the 2020 race for the White House now underway, the polarization in Washington means major economic legislation is highly unlikely, analysts said following Tuesday’s nationwide elections.

However, Republicans almost certainly would have faced steeper losses if not for the low unemployment, rising wages and strong economic growth now prevailing, boosted by recent Republican-driven tax cuts as well as a bipartisan stimulus package in this year’s budget.

Despite the prospect of partisan deadlock in the new Congress, Wall Street rallied Wednesday as investors put the elections’ uncertainty behind them.

Analysts said the divided Congress meant there were few threats to profits from new legislation.

“I think the Democrats would certainly be a line of defense against any further tax cuts,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, senior economist at Oxford Economics.

“I think we may see gridlock on major things but some chance for agreement on a modest infrastructure package,” she told AFP.

Republican leaders had been bracing for a backlash against Trump, with the potential losses in the House of Representatives well beyond the 23 seats Democrats needed to seize control.

Some races were still too close to call early Wednesday but even with Democrats winning nearly 30 seats, the result clearly fell far short of Republicans’ worst fears of losing 40 or more.


Avoiding talk of the economy
The solid US economy likely stemmed the Republican losses.

“The economy is what’s keeping Republicans competitive despite Trump. It’s a very weird situation,” Gary Jacobson, emeritus professor of political science at the University of California San Diego, told AFP late Tuesday.


Republicans were caught in the crossfire between Trump’s unpopularity and the economy’s strength, he said.

“Normally a president with an economy like the one we have now would be 10, maybe even 20 points higher,” Jacobson said. “It’s clear that if the economy hadn’t been that good there would have been a real blow out.”

Republicans largely avoided campaigning on the 2017 tax cuts, which were passed without a single Democratic vote and which many voters saw as a giveaway to the wealthy and major corporations.

Even Trump focused on other issues, including stoking immigration fears to motivate his base in the campaign’s dying days.

“We can talk about the economy but the fact is we know how well we’re doing with the economy,” Trump said over the weekend at a Florida rally. “I want to solve problems.”

Midterm elections typically do not hinge on economic concerns and a CNN exit poll showed the economy ranked third among the most important issues for voters nationwide, behind health care and immigration but ahead of gun policy.

Democratic candidates highlighted on health care, seeking to capitalize on the many unpopular and unsuccessful Republican efforts to repeal the 2010 legislation providing access to affordable health care and protecting those with pre-existing medical conditions.

“The economy is too good to have to say anything about it in defense. That’s why it was health care, health care, health care,” John Aldrich, professor of political science at Duke University, told AFP.

But as the impact of last year’s tax cuts fade and Trump’s aggressive tariff policies bite harder, while the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates, the US economy is expected to slow next year.

And Trump — who said Democrats would “take a wrecking ball to our economy” — now has two ready-made scapegoats to blame for any slowdown: the Democratic-controlled House, and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who he has repeatedly attacked for raising rates.

Vanden Houten of Oxford Economics said she was not forecasting a recession by the time Trump faces reelection in 2020 but the odds were rising.

“The economy is definitely going to be more vulnerable about a year from now,” she said.

“I think by the time the presidential campaign is in full swing, it’s certainly going to be a fading expansion.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s newly renegotiated North American free trade deal — the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement — is likely to come up for a vote in 2019 but Democrats are unlikely to block it. /cbb

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Republican candidates Bush and Trump clash over 9/11 remarks

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush transitioned from defense to offense on Sunday after criticism from rival Donald Trump that his brother, former President George W. Bush, carried some blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Trump, the flamboyant front-runner in the 15-candidate Republican field, once again provoked a tit-for-tat with Bush on Friday by saying his brother must share some of the blame for the attacks that occurred during his first year in office.

"Look, my brother responded to a crisis, and he did it as you would hope a president would do," Bush said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"The great majority of Americans believe that. And I don't know why he keeps bringing this up."

Bush said Trump's comments about the Sept. 11 attacks called his credibility into question. The former Florida governor attacked Trump's foreign policy credentials and compared his grip on international issues to a reality television show the billionaire businessman formerly hosted.

"Across the spectrum of foreign policy, Mr. Trump talks about things that -- as though he's still on 'The Apprentice,'" Bush said on CNN.

"Talking about Syria - saying ISIS should take out (Syrian President Bashar al-Assad), then Russia should take out ISIS, as though it was some kind of board game and not a serious approach," he said.

Trump doubled down on his comments during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," using a oft-repeated Jeb Bush phrase - that his brother "kept us safe" - against him.

"Jeb said 'we were safe with my brother. We were safe.' Well the World Trade Center just fell down," Trump said on Fox.

"I'm not blaming George Bush, but I don't want Jeb Bush to say 'my brother kept us safe,' because September 11th was one of the worst days in the history of this country."

Bush has defended his brother's actions after the Sept. 11 attacks, but his campaign has kept its distance from the unpopular president indelibly linked to the unpopular Iraq war.

He mocked Trump's comments and likened them to blaming President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the World War Two attack on Pearl Harbor.

"Next week, Mr. Trump is probably going to say that FDR was around when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor," he said. "It's what you do after that matters. And that's the sign of leadership." — Reuters

Dow, S&P 500 close at records after midterm vote

NEW YORK - U.S. stocks rose on Wednesday, with both the S&P 500 and Dow advancing to records, after Republicans took control of the Senate, allaying fears of drawn-out runoffs and raising investor hopes for more business- and energy-friendly policies.

A stronger-than-expected report on the labor market also helped lift stocks, but some weak tech sector earnings weighed on the Nasdaq.

The beaten-down energy sector rallied on hopes that a Republican majority could pass legislation that includes approval of oil and gas pipelines and reforms of crude and natural gas export laws. The S&P energy index .SPNY was up 1.8 percent.

"For now, the market generally likes the results. If we had uncertainty around the result, that would have been a cause for concern," said John Canally, chief economic strategist at LPL Financial.

"A little bit less business unfriendliness coming out of Washington is a clear plus," he added, noting that 88 percent of the time, stocks rise in the fourth quarter of midterm election years, regardless of the outcome.

U.S. private employers added 230,000 jobs in October, the most since June, according to the ADP National Employment report. The data could raise hopes for Friday's closely-watched payroll report. On the downside, the pace of growth in the U.S. services sector slowed more than expected in October.

Time Warner Inc (TWX.N) rose 4 percent to $77.99 after it reported revenue growth of 3 percent. Activision Blizzard Inc (ATVI.O) late Tuesday raised its full-year forecast, sending shares up 4.4 percent to $20.83.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI rose 100.69 points, or 0.58 percent, to 17,484.53, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 11.47 points, or 0.57 percent, to 2,023.57 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dipped 2.92 points, or 0.06 percent, to 4,620.72.

Weighing on the Nasdaq, TripAdvisor Inc (TRIP.O) dropped 14.1 percent to $71.95, a day after weaker-than-expected earnings. FireEye Inc (FEYE.O) fell 15 percent to $29.12 a day after the cybersecurity company's revenue outlook was largely below expectations.

After the market closed, Tesla Motors shares (TSLA.O) gained 5.2 percent following results.

About 6.4 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, below the 7.3 billion average for the last five sessions.

NYSE advancing issues outnumbered decliners 1,799 to 1,258, for a 1.43-to-1 ratio on the upside; on the Nasdaq, 1,408 issues rose and 1,278 fell for a 1.10-to-1 ratio.

The S&P 500 posted 92 new 52-week highs and 5 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite showed 113 new highs and 55 new lows.  — Reuters

White House rejects latest Republican offer to end shutdown

WASHINGTON - The White House rejected a Republican plan to reopen portions of the US government on Tuesday as the first shutdown in 17 years closed landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and threw hundreds of thousands of federal employees out of work.

The back and forth offered no sign that President Barack Obama and Republicans can soon end a standoff over health care that has sidelined everything from trade negotiations to medical research and raised new concerns about Congress's ability to perform its most basic duties.

The Republican plan would restore funding for national parks, veterans services, and the District of Columbia. Other government services would remain unfunded.

While the selective funding approach appeared to unite conservative and moderate Republicans for now, the White House said Obama would veto it. Democrats who control the Senate said they would reject it before it reached Obama's desk.

Republicans who control the House of Representatives said Obama could not complain about the impact of the shutdown while refusing to negotiate. "The White House position is unsustainably hypocritical," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.

An even bigger battle looms in coming weeks, when Congress must raise the debt limit or risk a US default that could roil global markets.

"This is a mess. A royal screwup," said Democratic Representative Louise Slaughter of New York.

Obama accused Republicans of taking the government hostage in order to sabotage his signature health care law, the most ambitious US social program in five decades.

"They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans," Obama said in the White House Rose Garden.

Republicans in the House view the Affordable Care Act as a dangerous extension of government power and have coupled their efforts to undermine it with continued government funding. The Democratic-controlled Senate has repeatedly rejected those efforts.

Spending authority for much of the government expired at midnight on Monday (0400 GMT), but that did not prevent the Obama administration from opening on Tuesday the health-insurance exchanges that form the centerpiece of the law.

Veterans pass barricades

Republicans said their latest proposal would help elderly veterans who earlier in the day pushed past barricades at the National World War II Memorial to get into the shuttered site.

"They're coming here because they want to visit their memorial, the World War II memorial. But no, the Obama administration has put barricades around it," said Republican Representative Mike Simpson ofIdaho.

Democrats said Republicans were resorting to gimmicks to avoid a vote that would restore funding to the entire government because they were afraid it would pass.

"That's important--a park? How about the kids who need daycare?" said Democratic Representative Sander Levin of Michigan. "You have to let all the hostages go. Every single one of them."

The veterans in question had gotten in to the memorial with help from several Republican lawmakers. But they didn't seem particularly interested in taking sides.

"It's just like a bunch of little kids fighting over candy," said George, Atkinson, an 82-year-old Coast Guard veteran of the Korean War. "The whole group ought to be replaced, top man down."

The plan appeared to temporarily unite Republicans, heading off a split between Tea Party conservatives who pushed for the government funding confrontation and moderates who appear to be losing stomach for the fight.

Before a meeting of House Republicans, Representative Peter King, a New York moderate, estimated that more than 100 of the chamber's 232 Republicans would back Obama's demand to restore all government funding without conditions. That would be enough to easily pass the House with the support of the chamber's 200 Democrats.

The shutdown closed landmarks like the Grand Canyon and pared the government's spy agencies by 70 percent. In Washington, the National Zoo shut off a popular "panda cam" that allowed visitors to view its newborn panda cub online. In Pennsylvania, white supremacists had to cancel a planned rally at Gettysburg National Military Park.

Market reaction

Whether the shutdown represents another bump in the road for a Congress increasingly plagued by dysfunction or is a sign of a more alarming breakdown in the political process could be determined by the reaction among voters and on Wall Street.

Stock investors appeared to be taking the news in stride with investors confident a deal could be reached quickly. The S&P 500 closed up 0.8 percent and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.2 percent.

But the US Treasury was forced to pay the highest interest rate in about 10 months on its short-term debt as many investors avoided bonds that would be due later this month, when the government is due to exhaust its borrowing capacity.

If Congress can agree to a new funding bill soon, the shutdown would have little impact on the world's largest economy.

A week-long shutdown would slow US economic growth by about 0.3 percentage points, according to Goldman Sachs, but a longer disruption could weigh on the economy more heavily as furloughed workers scale back personal spending.

The last shutdown in 1995 and 1996 cost taxpayers $1.4 billion, according to congressional researchers.

The political crisis raised fresh concern about whether Congress can meet a crucial mid-October deadline to raise the government's $16.7 trillion debt ceiling. Some Republicans see that vote as another opportunity to undercut Obama's healthcare law.

Failure to raise the debt limit would force the country to default on its obligations, dealing a blow to the economy and sending shockwaves around global markets.

A 2011 standoff over the debt ceiling hammered consumer confidence and prompted a first-ever downgrade of the United States' credit rating.

Analysts say this time it could be worse. Lawmakers back then were fighting over how best to reduce trillion-dollar budget deficits, but this time they are at loggerheads over an issue that does not lend itself to compromise as easily: an expansion of government-supported health benefits to millions of uninsured Americans.

Republicans have voted more than 40 times to repeal or delay "Obamacare," but they failed to block the launch of its online insurance marketplaces on Tuesday. The program had a rocky start as government websites struggled to cope with heavy online traffic.

"What I'm hearing from my constituents at home is if this is the only way to stop the runaway train called the federal government, then we're willing to try it," said Texas Senator John Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 24 percent of Americans would blame Republicans, while 19 percent would blame Obama or Democrats. Another 46 percent said everyone would be to blame.

The shutdown battles of the 1990s didn't substantially affect public's opinion of then-Democratic President Bill Clinton or his Republican adversaries, the Gallup polling organization said.

Republicans and Democrats traded blame for the shutdown, but many seemed deeply embarrassed for the institution as a whole.

Several said they planned to donate their salaries to charity or forego pay altogether.

"This is a black eye on our government at all levels," said Republican Representative Michael Grimm of New York. "I think it's a low point for us." — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com