House Cancels Recess to Try to Avoid Government Shutdown

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced that the break had been scrapped after conservatives in the party rejected his plan to temporarily fund the government in the new fiscal year and stage a vote to defund "Obamacare" health reforms. Without new spending authority, most U.S. government agencies would have to close their doors on Oct. 1 in a replay of politically painful shutdowns during the mid-1990s.

The decision came as Republican conservatives demanding a harder line introduced their own alternative plan: a one-year delay in implementing President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law coupled with a year-long government funding measure. The plan, proposed by Representative Tom Graves of Georgia, would hold spending on discretionary programs for fiscal 2014 to $967.4 billion – a level that would keep savings from across-the-board "sequester" spending cuts in place.