President Barack Obama and senior congressional leaders worked feverishly Friday to fix a budget impasse before the midnight deadline for a government shutdown.The two sides were trying to cobble together a deal on how much federal spending to slash, where to cut it and what caveats to attach as part of a bill to fund the government through Sept. 30. A temporary federal spending measure expires at midnight Friday.
Obama has already ruled out a further extension of that deadline, so the showdown is set.
"I'm not yet prepared to express wild optimism but I think we are further along," Obama said early Friday.
Reports suggested the two sides were close on fiscal issues but still divided on social issues. And Obama said ominously that the machinery of a shutdown was already in motion.
For a nation eager to trim to federal spending but also weary of Washington bickering, the spending showdown has real implications. Critics said the unpaid temporary vacation for 800,000 federal workers would inconvenience millions of people and damage a fragile economy.
A closure would mean idling hundreds of thousands of federal workers, and the services they provide, from processing many tax refunds, to staffing museums and national parks, to approving business loans. Medical research would be disrupted and most travel visa and passport services would stop, among many others.
'It has really devolved into a debate over policy questions.'- Senator Dick Durbin
Obama, Democrat Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, and Republican John Boehner, the House Speaker, have bargained and blustered by turns all week, struggling to settle their differences while manoeuvring to avoid any political blame if they fail.
Both sides will have to answer to their own base if they are perceived to have conceded too much. But each will also have to face the American people if government services are shut down.
Republicans want deeper spending cuts than the Democrats favour, provisions to cut off federal funds to Planned Parenthood and a stop to the Environmental Protection Agency's issuing of numerous anti-pollution regulations. The issues, known as policy riders, now appear to be the two largest stumbling blocks.
They're key issues for the so-called Tea Party, an extreme libertarian political movement that favours smaller government in almost all its forms. That such bickering is happening over what reports suggest makes up $35 billion US of a $3.5 trillion US budget deficit speaks to how much influence the Tea Party movement has had since its birth in the aftermath of Obama's election.
"It appears that the debate is no longer over deficit reduction," Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said. "It has really devolved into a debate over policy questions that have nothing to do directly, maybe even indirectly, with the budget deficit that we face or the money we're going to spend."
The abortion issue is top of mind in the Tea Party movement, and there were hints Friday of Republican flexibility on a ban they were seeking to deny federal funds to Planned Parenthood. In negotiations Thursday, Republicans suggested giving state officials discretion in deciding how to distribute family planning funds that now go directly from the federal government to organizations such as Planned Parenthood.
That would presumably leave a decision on funding to governors, many of whom oppose abortion, and sever the financial link between the federal government and an organization that Republicans assail as the country's biggest provider of abortions.
If the shutdown happens, federal U.S workers would not be paid. U.S. armed forces personnel serving overseas would be credited for their hours worked, but paycheques would be delayed.
Elected officials in Congress, the Senate and White House would continue to receive paycheques, and individual lawmakers worked to insulate themselves Friday from the poor optics of that fact.
Democratic Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Ben Nelson of Nebraska became the latest to announce they would not accept their salary during any shutdown.
"If retroactive pay is later approved, I'll direct my part to the U.S. Treasury," Nelson said. Both are seeking new terms in 2012.
While there is bluster on all sides, there's a sense that deep down, lawmakers aren't eager to go through with a shutdown.
Two rounds of short government shutdowns in the mid-1990s were politically devastating to Republicans, who had recently swept to a huge majority in both houses. Those shutdowns helped President Bill Clinton win re-election in 1996
