They wanted to kill ObamaCare as the price for funding the government.
- ObamaCare threatens the healthcare insurance industry directly and the whole healthcare industry indirectly.
- Fighting ObamaCare has allowed the neo-conservative branch of the Republican party to find new relevance under the Tea Party brand.
and
They wanted to slash government spending as the price for increasing the debt limit.
- Conservatives like this idea because they feel government has grown too large. However they don't want to cut defense or corporate subsidies but want to reduce transfer payments to the poor and elderly. They continue to propose cutting taxes on the richest Americans even though this has been identified as a primary cause of deficits.
- Economists argue that the time is still not right to slash spending and that the sequesters have slowed the recovery. Keynesian economists content that government should increase spending when the economy is slow. Is this economy slow or has the recovery just been jobless?
- Liberals / Progressives point to income inequality, especially the disappearance of the middle class, as the signal that government is not doing enough to level the playing field