Latest Republican thinking: We’ll vote to pay our nation’s bills for a few more weeks, but we won’t reopen the federal government

Sor­ry, Repub­li­cans.… not good enough:

House Repub­li­cans, look­ing for a way out of a bud­get stand­off they began, plan to vote as ear­ly as Thurs­day on a plan to raise the debt lim­it through Novem­ber 22.

But because the House pro­pos­al would not allow a vote on a Sen­ate-passed mea­sure to finance and reopen the gov­ern­ment, which has been part­ly closed now for 10 days, the White House reject­ed the over­ture as insuf­fi­cient to bring Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to the nego­ti­at­ing table for dis­cus­sions about his health care law or fur­ther long-term deficit reductions.

Props to The New York Times for cor­rect­ly not­ing that this lat­est fis­cal cri­sis was entire­ly man­u­fac­tured by Repub­li­cans. They start­ed it and they could end it in an hour if they want­ed to. But they don’t want to end it — at least not with­out forc­ing Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats to capitulate.

Democ­rats must not give in to the Repub­li­cans’ black­mail. They want to take away peo­ple’s health­care sim­ply in return for doing their jobs. That’s outrageous.

As law­mak­ers, we expect them to pay the bills they have incurred as the Amer­i­can peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and to pass a bud­get to ensure that Amer­i­cans receive the pub­lic ser­vices they are pay­ing for. Those are the basics of gov­ern­ing. Sad­ly, Repub­li­cans are not inter­est­ed in gov­ern­ing; they are inter­est­ed in winning.

White House Press Sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney said at today’s press brief­ing, “It is entire­ly with­in the pow­er of the Speak­er of the House and Repub­li­cans in the House to reverse [the shut­down] by allow­ing a vote on a clean CR [con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion] to reopen the gov­ern­ment. And we hope they will.”

He added: “The con­se­quences of the shut­down are many and they’re com­pound­ing. Var­i­ous econ­o­mists have not­ed the impact of a pro­longed shut­down on GDP growth… the con­se­quences are real and res­o­nant for mil­lions of Americans.”

Indeed they are, but Repub­li­cans are not wor­ried about those con­se­quences. What they are inter­est­ed in is repeal­ing Patient Pro­tec­tion Act (they’d set­tle for a delay of its imple­men­ta­tion to start with) — and they’re already proven they’re will­ing to keep near­ly a mil­lion pub­lic ser­vants off the job as hostages.

They’ve put forth some bills to fund a few key agen­cies on a piece­meal basis, but these bills real­ly just amount to gim­micks. Repub­li­cans can’t afford to look like they’re doing noth­ing, just try­ing to wait out the Pres­i­dent, so they have stayed in town and brought forth leg­is­la­tion to the floor. But none of us should be fooled. They are more inter­est­ed in appear­ances than results. They know how to stage a good pro­duc­tion, but not how to gov­ern this coun­try thought­ful­ly or effectively.

The shut­down isn’t going to end until either they or the Democ­rats capit­u­late — and Democ­rats must not capit­u­late because it would set a ter­ri­ble precedent.

The White House is smart to say “No deal.” What the Repub­li­cans are doing is retreat­ing slight­ly from their extreme and unrea­son­able posi­tion. But until they aban­don that posi­tion entire­ly, there can be no nego­ti­a­tions on a budget.