Obama Care vs Republicans

[Lamplighter]

Are people in the US prepared for a government shut down
for more than 2 weeks due to the GOP-obsession with Obamacare ?
That's when "Debt Ceiling" will supersede all the budget disagreements ?

This article starts out talking about the possibility of Obama
circumventing the Congress on the Dept Ceiling by some how invoking
the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.


Politico
Manu Raju, Jake Sherman and Carrie Budoff Brown
10/2/13

Wall Street comes to Washington. Will it matter? — Get ready for 14th amendment talk

Section 4 of the Reconstruction Era 14th amendment holds that
“[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned

But then it also gets into the current stew of yesterday's shut down of the government...

<snip>A harsh reality began setting into Capitol Hill …

The U.S. government may not reopen until the two parties reach a deal to raise the national debt ceiling. …
[i]f the standoff continues to creep toward the Oct. 17 deadline to raise the $16.7 trillion national debt ceiling,
the two issues will become intertwined — and potentially intractable.

House Republican leaders and top Senate Democrats privately began discussing this increasingly likely possibility Tuesday,
but the two sides have yet to engage in any direct negotiations in the acrimonious budget dispute …
Within the next few days, if House Republicans don’t accept a Senate plan to open the government until mid-November,
Reid is highly unlikely to accept a budget deal if it does not increase the debt ceiling, Democratic sources said Tuesday.

“If the House GOP won’t back the Senate’s stopgap plan by later this week,
Democrats are prepared to argue that it makes little sense to agree to a short-term spending bill
if Congress is forced to resolve another fiscal crisis in just a matter of days.
… A White House official said Tuesday night that the president could get behind Reid’s strategy.

… Republicans were internally weighing including a debt ceiling hike in their demands
to convene a House-Senate conference committee to discuss a bill to reopen the government.
In the coming days, the GOP leadership is likely to change its rhetoric,
with Republicans arguing about government funding and the debt ceiling in the same breath.”<snip>

Somehow, and I don't yet understand it, the GOP wants a Conference Committee
because by procedural rules, a vote will require 60% of the Congress (Senate filibuster ?),
not a majority of 51% as it is now.