Obama Meeting Leaders From Congress on Stalemate
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
Published: April 6, 2011
President Obama met at the White House Wednesday night withHouse Speaker John A. Boehner and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, but they failed to reach an agreement to end a budget stalemate that has threatened to shut down the government.
Philip Scott Andrews/The New York Times
President Obama arrived on the south lawn of the White House Wednesday after a trip to Philadelphia and New York, headed for talks with House Speaker John A. Boehner and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.
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After the meeting ended, Mr. Obama warned that a shutdown must be avoided.
"A shutdown will have real effects on everyday lives," he said at a White House press conference.
The nighttime meeting, called Wednesday afternoon by Mr. Obama, underscored the drama in the nation’s capital as the White House and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill spent the day pointing fingers at each other in advance of a possible government shutdown on Saturday. The government’s authority to spend money runs out at midnight on Friday night.
The meeting was called after a day of pointed sparring between Democrats and Republicans, with Mr. Boehner accusing Mr. Obama of failing to lead in the budget negotiations, while the president said Republicans had injected politics into the budget negotiations.
“I do not want to see Washington politics stand in the way of America’s progress,” he said.
Mr. Boehner quickly responded that Mr. Obama was failing to be a leader in the dispute over the federal budget, and said Republicans had been left in Washington to “clean up the mess.”
“I like the president personally. We get along well. But the president isn’t leading,” Mr. Boehner told reporters. “He didn’t lead on last year’s budget, and he clearly isn’t leading on this year’s budget.”
The meeting came at the end of a day in which some lawmakers and aides reported signs of progress in confidential negotiations between the House and Senate.
“There’s been a direct negotiation — things put on the table that had not been discussed before, and I think we’re moving towards closure,” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, told reporters.
But no final compromise emerged as a deadline approached for bringing a measure to the House floor before financing for government agencies runs out.
House Republicans moved ahead with a one-week extension, including more cuts, that the White House has already rejected. Republicans hoped that passage of the measure would put pressure on Democrats in the Senate and on Mr. Obama to make concessions on spending cuts and policy changes that Republicans want in exchange for a final budget deal. But administration officials warned that a shutdown would lead to the layoffs of as many as 800,000 federal employees and hobble agencies that offer help to small businesses and homeowners.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Reid took to the Senate floor to excoriate Republicans for not agreeing to compromise budget proposals by the Democrats.
Mr. Reid accused Republicans of seeking a “shortcut around doing our jobs” by proposing another one-week, stop-gap funding measure to keep the government operating.
The White House meeting came after a group of 16 Democratic senators sent a letter on Wednesday to Mr. Boehner, urging him to avoid a government shutdown because it would distract from the need to confront the nation’s longer-term fiscal challenges.
“A government shutdown at this time will only serve as a counterproductive attack on our economic recovery,” the senators said in the letter. “Economists note that a suspension of services would have a measurably detrimental impact on our economic output, while business leaders warn about a shutdown’s impact on confidence in the U.S. economic recovery. A setback of this nature would prevent the growth we need to tangibly address our long-term fiscal imbalances.”
The Obama administration’s efforts to spell out in detail the effects of a government shutdown appeared meant to put pressure on lawmakers to reach a deal by highlighting the scope of the pain Americans would feel if the government stopped operating, even for a brief period of time.
Administration officials, who declined to be quoted by name, focused on the economic consequences of a shutdown. But they also said that national parks would close, the Smithsonian would stop operating and the Cherry Blossom Parade in Washington, an annual tradition, would be postponed or canceled.
In 1995, when the government shut down for several weeks, federal workers who were deemed essential stayed at work but about 800,000 federal employees who were deemed nonessential were furloughed. Officials estimated on Wednesday that a similar number would be furloughed this time.
The Internet was just beginning to catch on with the public in 1995, but today, the federal government has a large online presence, most of which would be idled in a shutdown. “Only those Web sites that are part of these essential activities will continue to operate,” a senior official told reporters.
In the event of a shutdown, Medicare payments would continue, officials said, because the program’s money comes from a trust fund that is not affected by the annual budget process. But the Environmental Protection Agency would stop issuing permits, which would slow construction of transportation and other infrastructure projects, they said.
Military employees would not be told to stop working, and would continue to earn their salaries during a shutdown, officials said. But they would not actually receive their paychecks until a new budget is in place. Civilian employees at the Defense Department would be subject to the same determination of need as other federal employees.
“A significant number of D.O.D. civilian employees, unfortunately, would be furloughed,” the official said.
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