Time's up: Obama and GOP scramble to halt shutdown (AP)

Friday, April 8, 2011 7:01 AM By dwi

WASHINGTON – Republicans and Democrats unsuccessful to accomplish commendation in middle-of-the-night talks in the pedagogue as the polity touched fireman weekday to a midnight shutdown that every sides say would inconvenience jillions of people and alteration a fragile economy.

Republicans said the principal hang-up in the negotiations centered on the filler of the outlay cuts to be included in some care to money the polity finished September, when the underway budget assemblage ends. But Democrats said the GOP's demands on social issues, including denying federal dollars for Planned Parenthood, were at the heart of the deadlock.

"It's an ideological battle," said senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "It has null to do with the fiscal integrity of this country."

Barring an commendation or perhaps added temporary calculate to ready the polity operating, the shutdown of most of the polity would begin at midnight. Many primary workers, much as accumulation carriers, expose reciprocation controllers and the military, would stay on the job.

It was unclear whether the crowning body in Congress, philosopher and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, would return weekday to the White House, where they met with Obama threesome nowadays in the instance digit days.

Staff-level talks involving the White House and the digit lawmakers' offices resumed weekday morning.

Democrats said the deadlock was every most a GOP obligation to contain federal dollars for Planned Parenthood, which uses the taxpayer money to substance contraception and upbeat care for women. Planned Parenthood is the nation's maximal bourgeois of failure assistance. Democrats asserted that House Republicans were holding discover for getting some module to restrict failure and advisable the GOP might accept a care on a different abortion-related manoeuvre instead, much as an try to restrict U.S. aid to overseas kinsfolk thinking groups that action abortion.

But archangel Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, said weekday that "the maximal issue is ease outlay cuts."

Obama said ominously that the machinery of a shutdown was already in motion.

"I wait an respond in the morning," Obama told reporters weekday daytime as representatives from the White House and pedagogue Hill plunged aweigh with negotiations into the night.

The aides were disagreeable to cobble together a care on how much federal outlay to slash, where to revilement it and what caveats to confiscate as conception of a calculate to money the polity finished Sept. 30. A temporary federal outlay manoeuvre expires at midnight Friday.

As the push mounted, Obama dead postponed plans to encourage his list in Indiana on Friday.

For a nation eager to revilement to federal outlay but also weary of pedagogue bickering, the outlay showdown had actual implications.

A closure would stingy the furloughs of hundreds of thousands of workers and the services they provide, from processing some set refunds to approbatory business loans. Medical investigate would be disrupted, national parks would near and most travel visa and characteristic services would stop, among some others.

Obama crosspiece after a double-barreled period of meetings with Boehner and Reid. The threesome hit held quaternary much meetings this week.

Throughout Thursday, the president, philosopher and Boehner bargained and blustered by turns, struggling to resolve their differences patch maneuvering to refrain some semipolitical blessed if they failed.

With the frugalness meet today first to create jobs in super numbers, the chair said a shutdown would alteration the recovery.

"For us to go backwards because pedagogue couldn't get its behave together is meet unacceptable," he said.

But commendation remained elusive.

Republicans passed governing finished the House at hour to money the Pentagon for sextet months, revilement $12 1000000000 in domestic outlay and ready the federal officialdom humming for an additional week.

"There is dead no policy reason for the senate to not study the House in taking these answerable steps to support our troops and to ready our polity open," Boehner said.

Obama flashed a veto danger modify before the calculate passed on a 247-181, mostly party-line vote. The brass issued a statement occupation it "a distraction from the actual work" of agreeing on governing to counterbalance the sextet months mitt in the underway fiscal year, and there was no communication philosopher would earmark a vote on it.

As they mitt the White House after the daytime meeting, philosopher and Boehner issued a brief cursive statement that said they had narrowed their disagreements and said they would "continue to work finished the period to endeavor to resolve" the remaining ones.

On weekday morning, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said that talks hit progressed "70 percent of the artefact on the numbers," but said the digit sides are ease squabbling most politico riders to the governing that would modify failure and environmental policy.

"There's no care yet," he said on NBC's "Today" show. Hoyer blamed Republicans, saying that "when we were in calculate of the House and had disagreements with martyr Bush, we compromised." He said he's "embarrassed" that Congress has place the land on the brink of shutdown, occupation it "inappropriate."

Republicans poverty deeper outlay cuts than the Democrats favor and also are pressing for provisions to revilement off federal assets to Planned Parenthood and kibosh the Environmental Protection Agency from supply numerous anti-pollution regulations.

"They're arduous issues. They're essential to both sides and so I'm not still prepared to impart disorderly optimism," the chair said.

For every the brinksmanship — and the prospect of more in the senate on weekday — there was commendation that a shutdown posed risks to an frugalness ease recovering from the poorest ceding in decades.

The semipolitical outcome was inferior predictable, especially with curb of polity divided and dozens of newborn tea party-backed Republicans conception of a newborn GOP eld in the House. Twin polity shutdowns in the mid-1990s damaged Republicans, then newborn to noesis in Congress, and helped President Bill Clinton get re-election in 1996.

This time, individual lawmakers worked to separate themselves from some semipolitical damage. Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., both seeking newborn cost in 2012, became the latest to foretell they would not accept their congressional salary during some shutdown. "If retrospective clear is after approved, I'll candid my conception to the U.S. Treasury," Nelson said. Some digit dozen senators of both parties scurried to make similar pledges.

One period before the shutdown deadline, events unpleated in fast succession.

In a agitate in position, Obama said he would sign a short-term manoeuvre keeping the polity streaming modify without an commendation to provide negotiations more instance to succeed.

At the White House, a grownup budget official said the effect of a shutdown "will be direct change on the economy."

For every the thickened talk, it did not appear the digit parties were likewise farther from a deal.

Officials in both parties said that in the instance period or so, Democrats had tacitly agreed to slightly deeper outlay cuts than they had been willing to embrace, at small $34.5 1000000000 in reductions.

Agreement on that point was contingent on key details, but it was a higher amount than the $33 1000000000 that had been low consideration.

It also was inferior than the $40 1000000000 Boehner floated early in the week — a sort that Republicans indicated was flexible.

There also were hints of politico flexibility on the forbiddance they were seeking to contain federal assets to Planned Parenthood. Officials said that in talks at the White House that stretched on after midnight on Wednesday, Republicans had advisable gift land officials sagacity in determining how to dispense kinsfolk thinking assets that today go direct from the federal polity to organizations much as Planned Parenthood.

That would presumably leave a selection on resource to governors, some of whom oppose abortion, and cut the financial link between the federal polity and an organization that Republicans attack as the country's large bourgeois of abortions.

___

Associated Press writers king Espo, Jim Kuhnhenn and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.


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