Unless the House clears the Senate plan to keep the government afloat, it will shut down. | AP Photos Senate rejects House plan — again

The government is poised for a partial shutdown at midnight unless House Republicans unexpectedly agree to quickly clear the Senate’s plan to keep the government afloat for six more weeks.

In an extraordinary back-and-forth between the House and Senate that extended late into the night, Democrats beat back attempt after attempt to gut President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. After Senate Democrats rejected the House’s year-long delay of Obamacare and a repeal of the medical device tax on Monday afternoon, Democrats returned to the floor after 9 p.m. to kill another House GOP proposal.


The second measure would have kept the government open in exchange for delaying the health care law’s individual mandate and eliminating federal health care contributions for lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he would keep the Senate in session late into Monday night to dismiss any House proposal, making clear that negotiations are over between the two chambers. Reid said Senate Democrats are firmly united behind a strategy in which the chamber won’t “do anything other than wait for them to pass our CR.”

“They try to send us something back, they’re spinning their wheels. We are not going to change Obamacare,” Reid said of the House. “Our negotiation is over with and I’ve said for two weeks: They should pass a CR. They are closing down the government, I don’t know what in the world is wrong with them.”

The stakes are enormous. If the two sides fail to reach a deal, hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be furloughed Tuesday and a host of federal services will be impacted, affecting everyone from first-time homebuyers seeking government-backed mortgages to tourists visiting Smithsonian museums and national parks.

Meanwhile, there are no negotiations going on between Speaker John Boehner and Reid, who called House Republicans “anarachists” again on Monday after hearing of the latest House proposal.

“We are not going to be bullied,” Reid said of House Republicans. “We are not going to mess around with Obamacare. They need to get a life.”

Even a one-week stop-gap plan - floated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as part of a larger package - was roundly dismissed by Democratic leaders as well as conservative Republicans. McConnell’s offer could have allowed more time for the House and Senate to work out their differences on a longer-term continuing resolution. But neither House Republicans nor Senate Democrats saw any upside to it.

“There’s a simple solution — pass the bill that’s over there,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, a member of Democratic leadership.

“I’m not inclined to support that, no,” said Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), a leading conservative. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), another leading conservative voice, said flatly “no” when asked if he’d support it.

Top Democrats said they were deeply skeptical of the short-term efforts because there are no ongoing negotiations and Republicans are still using a possible shutdown as leverage to gut the health care law. Democrats also believe their six-week bill is short enough.

“The only point of a one-week CR would be to let the House keep passing junk bills,” a Senate Democratic leadership aide said.

The floating — and popping — of the one-week trial balloon came on a frantic last day of procedural jostling, theatrics and bitter attacks ahead of the first possible government shutdown since the Clinton era. Moving to keep Democrats united, Reid privately met Monday with the 53 other members of his caucus before the Senate gaveled into session. It was the first party meeting since the Senate passed its funding bill on Friday, and helped Reid cement Democratic solidarity in the showdown with Republicans and discuss McConnell’s offer. Republicans too held their own closed-door caucus on Monday in an attempt to react to the back and forth between the two chambers.

Then the Senate doubled down on Monday afternoon and again dismissed House attempts to chip away at Obamacare as part of a government funding bill. On a party-line 54-46 roll call, the Senate rejected language passed over the weekend to repeal a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices and delay Obamacare by a year, leaving the House with the same Senate language it received on Friday: A bill that keeps the government funded at a $986 billion annual level through Nov. 15.

The chamber also unanimously passed a bill from the House to pay military troops in the event of the shutdown, a measure that also garnered unanimous support in the House over the weekend.

“We’re not going to leave the military hanging out,” Schumer said.

If anything, passage of that noncontroversial language was an acknowledgment that Senate Democrats and House Republicans would find no common ground to avoid a cutoff in government services.

Though Republicans insisted their proposed alterations to Obamacare were responsible, Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama and remained firm that there would be no ground given on the health care law. This impasse has some Republicans growing queasy about continued attempts by conservatives to link the health care law with keeping the government running.

“I voted against Obamacare and have repeatedly voted to repeal, reform and replace it, but I disagree with the strategy of linking Obamacare with the continuing functioning of government — a strategy that cannot possibly work,” said Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine on Monday.

Seung Min Kim and Jake Sherman contributed to this report.