Obama Meeting Fails to End Stalemate Over Federal Budget
By CARL HULSE and JACKIE CALMES
Published: April 6, 2011
WASHINGTON — President Obama and Congressional leaders said Wednesday that a late-night White House bargaining session produced no budget breakthrough that would avert a government shutdown this weekend but agreed the two sides had narrowed the issues in efforts to strike a deal.
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
The Capitol Visitor Center would be among the places idled in a government shutdown.
Post a CommentRelated
Blogs
The Caucus
The latest on President Obama, the new Congress and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion.
Emerging from a 90-minute meeting with Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Speaker John A. Boehner, the president said aides would work through the night and he and Mr. Reid expressed optimism that a compromise could be reached.
“I remain confident that if we’re serious about getting something done, we should be able to complete a deal and get it passed and avert a shutdown,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Boehner, well aware of a Republican rank-and-file unsure about giving much ground, stressed that no deal had been struck but said Republicans also wanted to break the impasse.
“There is an intent on both sides to continue to work together to try to resolve this,” Mr. Boehner said. “No one wants the government to shut down.”
The session sets up a last-ditch effort to beat the clock and find an agreement that would keep the government operating after financing expires Friday. The unusual nighttime meeting came after top lawmakers and senior Congressional aides reported progress in confidential budget talks between the House and Senate earlier on Wednesday while the president warned that a government shutdown would cut off popular services and stall the economic recovery.
“Companies don’t like uncertainty,” Mr. Obama said during a town-hall-style meeting on energy near Philadelphia, “and if they start seeing that suddenly we may have a shutdown of our government, that could halt momentum right when we need to build it up — all because of politics.”
Congressional negotiators were called to the White House as the deadline essentially passed for House consideration of a budget compromise before financing for government agencies runs out Friday. If a deal was reached, a stopgap measure could conceivably be passed, providing a few days’ grace period that would keep agencies operating until a full budget could be considered next week.
Determined to put the ball in the Democratic court, Mr. Boehner said the Republican House would vote Thursday on a plan that would keep the government open for another week, extract $12 billion in reductions to spending and fully finance the Pentagon through Sept. 30.
But the president and Senate Democrats have said that proposal will not advance. Mr. Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, described the planned vote as an attempt by the Republicans to create a distraction from their unwillingness to compromise.
“It is time for my friends in the House of Representatives to stop campaigning and start governing,” Mr. Reid said Wednesday evening on the Senate floor.
Both sides sought to skirt blame for an impasse that threatened to leave visitors to national parks and museums on the outside looking in this weekend, with wider repercussions coming Monday if government offices closed on Friday but did not reopen.
The decision by the House leadership to push ahead with the short-term measure came despite the fact that both sides acknowledged that the outlook for an agreement had improved slightly after a face-to-face meeting on Tuesday afternoon between Mr. Reid and Mr. Boehner, both veteran Congressional deal makers.
“We’ve made some progress, yes,” said Mr. Boehner, of Ohio, after a private meeting of House Republicans. “But we are not finished, not by a long shot.”
As top aides to Mr. Boehner and Mr. Reid exchanged proposals and counterproposals, Democrats said the talks had remained in the neighborhood of $33 billion in spending reductions though Mr. Boehner sought $40 billion on Tuesday in a new offer that surprised Democrats.
Democrats have signaled a willingness to go deeper into the budget depending on how the cuts are spread across federal agencies, with Democrats seeking to lessen the impact on health and education programs.
“There’s been a direct negotiation — things put on the table that had not been discussed before — and I think we’re moving toward closure,” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, told reporters.
Democrats also said they expect to make concessions on the policy provisions and regulatory restrictions that Republicans are insisting be in any final deal.
Still, time was running out.
House officials said that under the rules of the Republican majority, a full budget bill would have to have been introduced by Wednesday night in order to be considered on the House floor on Friday, the day financing expires.
Related
Blogs
The Caucus
The latest on President Obama, the new Congress and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion.
The leadership could cite emergency circumstances to waive the rule if a compromise was reached. In addition, as President Obama said Tuesday, a temporary budget could be approved for a few days while the legislation providing money through Sept. 30 was written and submitted for votes in the House and Senate.
Even though Mr. Obama said Tuesday that he would not sign more short-term spending plans, the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, said Wednesday that the president could go along with one if it was just to provide time to write a budget bill and “get it through the process on Capitol Hill.”
Administration officials on Wednesday privately expressed increasing frustration that Congressional leaders seemed unable to resolve the dispute and were not showing sufficient urgency in trying to come to an agreement.
Appearing before reporters after his party meeting, Mr. Boehner said he found Mr. Obama’s handling of the budget fight lacking.
“I’ve got to tell you all that I like the president personally,” Mr. Boehner said. “We get along well. But the president isn’t leading. He didn’t lead on last year’s budget, and he clearly is not leading on this year’s budget.”
The one-week stopgap drafted by House Republicans would provide money through Sept. 30 for the Pentagon, which has said the budget fight is causing considerable problems for the military. The inclusion of the military spending should win support for the bill even from House conservatives who had previously said they would not back any more temporary spending measures. It also allows Republicans to say they are making certain that troops fighting overseas do not miss a paycheck.
“We have people today fighting for our liberty and our freedom,” said RepresentativeKevin McCarthy of California, the No. 3 House Republican. “You do not want to pay them?”
Republicans also expect that the military money will put added pressure on Democrats to back the measure, though they do not seem inclined to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment