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Obama care will go on , no shut down of Gov and there will be no end of days for US, the tax man will see to that
Senate votes to move ahead with bill to keep government funded
By Michael O'Brien, Political Reporter, NBC News
The Senate voted Wednesday to take up the legislation to keep the government open past Sept. 30 following a marathon speech by Sen. Ted Cruz that did little to slow or affect that vote's outcome.
Though the freshman senator from Texas spent more than 21 hours on his feet speaking throughout the night to urge colleagues against voting to take up House-passed spending legislation, the Senate did just the opposite. The chamber will next hold a series of votes to approve its own version of the bill and send it back to the House.
It's now a race against the clock for Congress to figure out a workable solution before the end of Monday, after which all but the most essential government services would cease. Such a shutdown would have broad economic consequences, along with political implications for both parties.
The Senate voted with unanimity to invoke "cloture" on the motion to proceed -- that is, produce the 60 votes needed to formally take up the legislation and dispatch the threat of a filibuster. Even after hours of haranguing his colleagues to stall action to prevent Democrats from changing the legislation, Cruz voted with every other senator to begin the process of changing it.
This allows the Senate to take up the legislation, and will enable Democrats to eventually strip the defund-
Obamacare measure from the House-passed legislation. That amendment will need to achieve cloture, and Cruz is expected to vote against that.
The bill passed last week by the House would fund the government for an additional two months, but also defund "Obamacare." Cruz had opposed taking up this legislation so that Democrats could not strip the defund-Obamacare measure from the underlying legislation before sending it back to the Republican-controlled House.