White House meeting fails to produce budget deal, Boehner’s office says
Gallery: Battle over the U.S. budget: Congressional Republicans and Democrats have waged a long fight in trying to agree on a budget plan to slash federal spending and avert a government shutdown.
President Obama and Republican congressional leaders failed to reach agreement on a budget deal Tuesday at a White House meeting aimed at averting a federal government shutdown, according to the office of the GOP House speaker.
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Gallery: Federal shutdowns in the 1990s: Federal shutdowns in 1995 and 1996 closed government offices, parks and museums, and caused several hundred thousand workers to be furloughed.
Fed Workers: What are they telling you?
"If a shutdown occurs, will you have to work? Are you "essential" or "non-essential"? "
Congressional leaders left the White House around noon after the meeting, which lasted just over an hour. Administration officials did not immediately comment, but the office of House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said the two sides had not yet come to terms on the dollar value of total spending cuts.
After the meeting, Boehner’s office suggested that Democrats were trying to put him “in a box” on spending levels. “As he has said for the past week, the speaker reminded those present that there has never been an agreement on $33 billion as an acceptable level of spending cuts, and that $33 billion in cuts is not enough, particularly when it is achieved in large part through budget gimmicks,” Boehner’s office said.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), meanwhile, told reporters that the prospects for reaching a funding deal for the rest of the year were so far off that it was not very likely this week. He said after conferring with Boehner that the best chance of averting a work stoppage is approving the GOP’s offer of a one-week extension of government funding, through April 15, in exchange for $12 billion in spending cuts and full funding of the Pentagon for the remainder of the year.
“I’m saying I don’t think that’s even a likelihood and that there would be some need for a bridge to get there, but the bottom line is, we don’t have a deal,” Cantor said, dismissing the idea that a broad deal could be reached by Friday.
Earlier, Democrats provided conflicting reports on whether Obama would accept the Republican extension.
The No. 2 House Democrat said Tuesday that members of his party would oppose the stopgap measure unveiled by House Republicans Monday night.
“I will oppose this bill,” House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters. “I hope other Democrats will oppose it. I don’t know that every Democrat will oppose it. There will be some things in there that they perhaps think are appropriate.”
But White House spokesman Jay Carney, speaking to reporters before the start of the meeting between Obama and congressional leaders, would not comment on the GOP’s short-term proposal to fund the government for another week. He would neither confirm nor deny reports that the White House had already shot down the deal, saying only that the administration believes a long-term agreement is “within reach.”
House GOP leaders said that if Obama rejected their one-week extension of government funding because of the heavy cuts in spending attached to it, he would bear the blame for heightening the chances of a federal worker shutdown.
“The White House has increased the likelihood of a shutdown,” Cantor told reporters after an hour-long huddle with the Republican Conference.
Hoyer argued that through the one-week stopgap, House Republicans are “trying to do indirectly” what they have not yet been able to do directly: enact $61 billion in cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year, a proposal to which Democrats remain opposed.
He also called the one-week stopgap “inconsistent” with Cantor’s previous statement that he would not support an additional short-term funding bill. Hoyer added that another short-term measure would be “an extraordinarily inefficient, ineffective and costly way of doing business, funding the largest enterprise in the world on a weekly basis.”
After weeks of negotiating over money, time is now also a major concern. There is general agreement that the two sides must cut a deal by Tuesday night if it is to work its way through both chambers and reach Obama’s desk before the government runs out of money Friday.
Late Monday, a senior White House aide told top agency officials to begin preparations for how to handle a shutdown, a move that was echoed in a statement by Boehner to House leaders.
But Boehner also announced his intention to offer Obama and Senate Democrats another stopgap funding measure that would keep federal funding flowing for an additional week. That offer would come with conditions, however: According to the House Appropriations Committee, Democrats would have to agree to $12 billion in further spending cuts and to fund the Defense Department for the remainder of the year — thus removing the Pentagon from the possible budget disruptions still faced by other federal agencies.
Short of a broad deal for the entire federal government, approving another short-term measure might be the only route to keep Washington open while the two sides work out their differences.
Many Democrats and Republicans have said they would not approve what would be the seventh stopgap funding bill since October, but some key conservative lawmakers said Monday that they would support one week’s funding if the bill included the Pentagon’s yearly spending. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has been pleading with Congress to exempt his department from the piecemeal plans for funding the government a few weeks at a time.
If lawmakers cannot reach an agreement, the first federal government shutdown since the mid-1990s would start Saturday and the full impact would be felt on Monday, when millions of federal employees across the country would typically report for work.
As the deadline neared, Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) exchanged insults, each side blaming the other for the stalemate.
Gallery
Gallery: Federal shutdowns in the 1990s: Federal shutdowns in 1995 and 1996 closed government offices, parks and museums, and caused several hundred thousand workers to be furloughed.
Fed Workers: What are they telling you?
"If a shutdown occurs, will you have to work? Are you "essential" or "non-essential"? "
“Despite attempts by Democrats to lock in a number among themselves, I’ve made clear that their $33 billion is not enough, and many of the cuts that the White House and Senate Democrats are talking about are full of smoke and mirrors. That’s unacceptable,” Boehner said in a statement.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Reid insisted that “we agreed upon a number.” He accused Boehner of backing away from the compromise because of pressure from tea party activists who provided much of the energy in the GOP’s massive victory in the 2010 elections.
Many conservative Republicans in the House have said they would not vote for any budget deal unless it contained the full $61 billion in cuts GOP members approved earlier this year in a party-line vote. That measure was later rejected by the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats.
“Republicans and the tea party continue to reject reality, and insist instead on ideology,” Reid said.
At issue, according to aides familiar with the talks, is the makeup of the spending cuts. Democrats want to reach the $33 billion through a combination of permanent cuts to a number of federal agencies and one-time reductions to other government programs, such as Pell grants and some agriculture subsidies.
Republicans are balking at many of the temporary cuts because they will not permanently reduce the size of government.
Even if the chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees can agree on a package of cuts, and conservative House members decide to go along with the plan, there might not be enough time to approve it before the deadline.
House Republicans huddled late Monday and, according to a GOP aide, gave the speaker an ovation when he informed them that he was advising the House Administration Committee to begin preparing for a possible shutdown. That process includes alerting lawmakers and senior staff about which employees would not report to work if no agreement is reached.
Boehner’s offer of another stopgap bill comes at a significantly higher cost than the $2 billion in cuts per week that accompanied the two most recent short-term funding plans. Also, Republicans are attaching some policy prescriptions to the one-week measure, including one that would prohibit federal funds going toward any abortion services in the District.
The issue will come to a head Tuesday at a White House gathering of Obama, Boehner, Reid, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.).
“The president has made clear that we all understand the need to cut spending, and significant progress has been made in agreeing that we can all work off the same number,” Carney told reporters Monday.
Republicans and Democrats are eager to avoid a shutdown in part because neither side thinks it will be able to claim political advantage. In a new Washington Post poll, 37 percent say they would fault the Obama administration for a partial federal shutdown. The same number would blame the Republicans in Congress.
Those figures are nearly the same as in late February, despite five weeks of fierce negotiations and positioning on the issue.
This is a change from the government shutdowns in the mid-1990s. In late 1995, 46 percent of voters said they would blame then House speaker, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), if the government shut down, and 27 percent would blame President Bill Clinton.
The new numbers also indicate growing disillusionment among Republicans. Although 81 percent of Republicans say they think Obama is “just playing politics” with the budget (up from 70 percent five weeks ago), 40 percent of all Republicans see the GOP in Congress as posturing on the budget — a 13-point increase.
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Staff writers Jon Cohen, Felicia Sonmez and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.
