It's the 16th of October, and also Day 16 of the government shutdown.

The House discharge petition (the Miller/Van Hollen effort mentioned in our last update) that would provide a “clean Continuing Resolution” now has 196 signatures, short of the 218 needed to move to a vote on the House floor.  No Republicans have signed.

Various proposals continue to be rejected and eyes are now mostly on the Senate as a group of a dozen Senators from both parties attempt to find a compromise.  As the Senate still works on a bipartisan compromise, the House is still doing their partisan piecemeal approach and GOP leaders are advancing this as their latest proposal: Reopen government until Jan. 15, raise the debt ceiling until Feb. 7, eliminate health care benefits for lawmakers and cabinet officials, require income verification for Affordable Care Act subsidies, and suspend the medical device tax for two years.  It’s not going to fly as the White House immediately issued a veto threat.

Tomorrow is still the date the federal government will be unlikely able to pay all our bills, but some estimate that there’s enough funding in the Treasury until the end of the month. We will see if tomorrow ends up being a hard deadline for making a deal to avert national default.