House Leaders Seize on Ted Cruz’s Idea to End Shutdown (Updated) 
 
 By Emma Dumain and Matt Fuller 
 
 Updated 4:23 p.m. | The House will vote Tuesday evening on three bills to reopen various government programs that were shuttered when appropriations lapsed less than 24 hours ago. 
 
 One will allow veterans to continue receiving benefits, one will fund daily operation of national parks and museums and one will give the District of Columbia the authority to spend its own funds in the absence of congressional authorization. 
 
 The suite of bills is part of a larger plan GOP leaders unveiled on Tuesday afternoon wherein Congress can ensure certain key government functions remain operational — without conceding on a full continuing resolution that doesn’t defund or delay certain provisions of the 2010 health care law. 
 
 Though Republican aides said the idea did not originate in the other chamber, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, floated the idea on Monday. 
 
 The substance and sequence of all these bills has not yet been determined, but they are not expected to include extraneous policy riders regarding Obamacare. All of the mini-CRs would go to Dec. 15 and would fund agencies at the same sequester level as proposed under the comprehensive CR that the chambers have been battling over for the past week and a half. 
 
 Democratic votes will be needed for passage, however, considering a two-thirds majority is needed for bills on the suspension calendar. And so far, that support isn’t guaranteed. 
 
 
 
 “The House majority apparently can’t take the heat from the fire they lit,” said Appropriations Committee ranking member Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., in a statement. “Why is opening parks more important than ensuring seniors, poor mothers and children have access to meals and critical services? Ending the shutdown couldn’t be more simple — stop playing games and pass the reasonable bill the Senate and the White House have already agreed to.” 
 
 Though House Democrats will likely be challenged for “no” votes against non-controversial measures that help veterans and reopen museums to the nation’s tourists, Lowey’s arguments against the strategy suggests that lawmakers will be able to frame their opposition around the House GOP’s apparent “picking and choosing.” 
 
 Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., confirmed that this new plan was, in part, political: funding the IRS and the Environmental Protection Agency, he said, were at the bottom of the GOP’s list for reopening. 
 
 Senate Democrats have already rejected the approach, saying they want the entire government to be funded. 
 
 “We just decided in there we’re not going to do that,” Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said after leaving Tuesday’s Senate Democratic Conference meeting. 
 
 White House spokesman Jay Carney also ripped the idea as “not serious.” 
 
 “If they want to open the government, they should open the government,” Carney said. 
 
 Niels Lesniewski and Steven T. Dennis contributed to this report. ||||| The House defeated three targeted government funding bills, as the first day of a government shutdown ended on Capitol Hill. 
 
 The bills would have funded national parks and veterans affairs, and one would have allowed the District of Columbia to use local revenue to fund governmental functions. The legislation came up under a fast-track procedure, which required two-thirds majority for House passage. 
 
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 reset Shutdown: Democrats vs. GOP 
 
 Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama said they were opposed to the bills. 
 
 “These piecemeal efforts are not serious and they are no way to run a government,” said White House spokesman Amy Brundage. 
 
 The House on Wednesday will take up similar bills, including one to fund the National Institutes of Health. Senate Republicans were moving forward with similar procedures. The idea originated with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sparking Democratic criticism. 
 
 (POLITICO's full government shutdown coverage) 
 
 “Sen. Ted Cruz is going to pick his favorite federal agencies to keep open? Come on,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) quipped. 
 
 The consideration of narrow bills is a clear attempt to show that Republicans are working, and Democrats are stalling. 
 
 Indeed, with most of the government closed, House Republicans are trying to do everything they can to show that they want to negotiate their way out of this mess — unlike Senate Democrats, who they say are intransigent. 
 
 There’s absolutely no sign whether this shutdown will last for a few days or several weeks. 
 
 House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) sat around a table in the Capitol with eight Republican negotiators, in an attempt to illustrate that the Senate Democrats are not willing to hash out differences over funding the Affordable Care Act. 
 
 “We’re here to say to the Senate Democrats, come and talk to us,” Cantor said, sitting next to Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee. “This is how we resolve our differences and can work our way out of this kind of situation.” 
 
 Democrats point out that the House has refused to enter into similar negotiations over a budget agreement and a long-term farm bill. Senate Democrats say they will not negotiate until the House passes a six-week CR without health-care policy attached. 
 
 The gulf between House Republicans and Senate Democrats — the cause of the first shutdown since 1996 — remains wide. House Republicans have refused to fund Obamacare as part of the appropriations process — even for a few weeks. Senate Democrats and Obama , however, will not negotiate health care policy as part of the government-funding discussion. 
 
 (PHOTOS: D.C. closes up shop) 
 
 Senate Democrats and the White House have, thus far, presented a unified front against House Republicans. Rob Nabors, a top aide to President Barack Obama, met with Senate Democratic leaders Tuesday morning in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) Capitol office. 
 
 Some Republicans appear to be breaking from the House GOP’s stance. 
 
 Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) took to Twitter to say “We fought the good fight. Time for a clean CR.” Boehner would need more than 100 Republicans to take that position to preserve his internal politics. 
 
 Members of the House expect to be in session and in Washington until the shutdown is resolved. 
 
 Meanwhile, the effects of the shutdown on the sprawling Capitol campus were obvious Tuesday morning. Lines to enter some of the House office buildings snaked around sidewalks. Some garages were closed. Signs posted in the Capitol noted that some dining halls would be shuttered during the shutdown. 
 
 Meanwhile, some House lawmakers say they will not accept their pay during a shutdown: Florida Republican Reps. Tom Rooney and Vern Buchanan announced they wouldn’t accept their $174,000-per-year salary. 
 
 The Senate has passed a continuing resolution that would fund government until Nov. 15, but funded the health care law. The House has passed multiple CRs, but all of them have taken swipes at the Affordable Care Act — and each one has been rejected by the Democratic Senate. First, the House passed a bill that defunded the entire health care law. Then they passed a bill to delay the law for a year, while repealing the medical device tax that funds the law. On Monday, they passed another bill, which would’ve canceled health-insurance subsidies for members of Congress, their staff and the White House, while also delaying for one year the mandate that individuals buy health insurance. 
 
 Burgess Everett contributed to this report.
– House Republicans can't get one big spending bill through the Senate, so how about lots of little spending bills? That seems to be the strategy they're settling on, reports Roll Call, and it's one floated previously by the Senate's Ted Cruz. The House plans to vote on a series of separate bills that would keep individual agencies open through mid-December. The VA and the National Park Service are likely candidates. Still, don't expect this to solve anything, because comments from Democrats suggest they won't go along. “They’re trying to [do this] a little piecemeal, to give kind of a faux way of solving problems,” says Sen. Barbara Mikulski. Politico suggests it's a move by John Boehner to try to show that Republicans are earnestly working toward a solution. President Obama, meanwhile, tried to sway public opinion himself in afternoon remarks in the Rose Garden, reports NBC News. "This Republican shutdown did not have to happen," he said. "But I want every American to understand why it did happen. They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans."