Obama Rejects Latest GOP Spending Bill as Government Shutdown Looms

Published April 05, 2011

| FoxNews.com

AP

In this April 1 photo, House Speaker John Boehner pauses during a news conference on Capitol Hill.

A visibly frustrated President Obama said Tuesday that Democrats have agreed to how much to cut from the budget and that he won't accept another temporary spending bill that House Republicans are rallying behind to prevent a government shutdown.
"We've already done that twice," Obama said in a surprise appearance at the White House briefing room. "That is not a way to run a government. "I can't have our agencies making plans based on two-week budgets."
Republicans are already blaming the White House for not considering another temporary spending bill.
"The White House has increased the likelihood of a shutdown," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said.
House Speaker John Boehner told the president that House Republicans were rallying behind a third option because the House refused to be "put in a box and forced to choose between two options that are bad for the country (accepting a bad deal that fails to make real spending cuts, or accepting a government shutdown due to Senate inaction)," according to a readout from Boehner's camp.
The resolution was a backup that Boehner would only "break glass" on if he had to, and senior budget negotiators say they weren't sure it had the votes to pass even if it were accepted by Democrats.
Talks of a new resolution come as top-ranking lawmakers met at the White House Tuesday in what could be the last chance to reach a deal before the lights go out, which both the Obama administration and House Republicans are preparing for with notices to federal workers.
After the closed-door meeting of President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Boehner and their respective appropriations committee chairmen, Boehner said no budget agreement was reached. He added that Republicans are now rallying behind a seventh short-term resolution to keep government operating for one more week so Congress can get through the machinations needed to pass a compromise spending plan.
The meeting was a last-ditch effort to find a satisfactory number for operating the government for the remaining six months of the fiscal year. Republicans, fired up by the Senate's refusal to accept a $61 billion cut to current spending levels, said Democratic intransigence has led the nation to the brink.
Tea Party-backed freshmen lawmakers said they will support the new resolution, particularly since it is attached to a Defense spending bill.
But White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, who wouldn't comment on whether the White House had rejected the GOP bill, said it is premature to talk about any short-term solution.
"What we have said, it is not necessary and not acceptable to create toll booths to keep the government going," he said.
A spokesman for House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the new resolution "irresponsible and unacceptable."
Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said he will oppose the one-week resolution and added that he hopes other Democrats will follow his lead. Hoyer, who has voted for previous temporary spending bills, said they are "ineffective, inefficient and costly."
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a Senate legislative committee Tuesday that forcing the government to live week-by-week this far into the fiscal year risks undermining the economic recovery underway.
The last-ditch deal -- which had been drawn up because the House needs to allow a three-day buffer before considering a longer-term budget, pushing back a vote beyond Friday night's deadline for a shutdown -- includes $12 billion in cuts from an array of places and a funding plan to provide for the Pentagon through the end of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.
Most every department of the government would face some kind of cut from prior spending levels, including military construction, high speed rail corridor funding, first responder grants, foreign assistance accounts and hospital readiness grants.
Other "riders" are not as high-profile as earlier proposals to cut government aid to Planned Parenthood or de-fund the health care overhaul, but would include a ban on federal and local money from paying for abortions in the District of Columbia, prohibition from transferring Guantanamo detainees to the United States and a requirement that the secretary of defense certify the transfer of a detainee to another country that would not put the U.S. at risk.
Stopgap measures, though, have become increasingly unpopular in Congress, particularly among House conservatives, and Republicans could have to look to moderate Blue Dog Democrats to help pick up votes. At the same time, congressional leaders were at the White House trying to work out a deal to fund the government for the rest of the year.
As the president meets with Boehner, Reid, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman, Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, over a number that could range from $33 billion to $61 billion in cuts -- or 2-4 percent of the total discretionary budget, the administration is preparing for a possible government shutdown.
A top official at the White House Office of Management and Budget has written a memo to agency heads directing them to review and share their contingency plans for a shutdown.
The Committee on House Administration also sent out a memo instructing employers in the House of Representatives to determine which "essential personnel" should keep working should funding lapse. The only House employees allowed to keep working would be those whose jobs are "directly related to constitutional responsibilities, related to the protection of human life, or related to the protection of property."
Fox News' Trish Turner and Chad Pergram contributed to this report.