Talks have stalled between congressional Democrats and Republicans trying to negotiate a federal budget for the remainder of the fiscal year, escalating the chances that the government could at least partially shut down next month. Lawmakers have only two weeks to come up with a deal before a sixth, short-term funding bill, or continuing resolution, expires on April 8, and so far both sides are doing little more than pointing fingers of blame at each other for causing such uncertainty.
Democrats said Monday they were prepared to offer a deal to the GOP that would reduce fiscal 2011 spending by $20 billion through September, the end of the current fiscal year. According to Democratic aides, however, Republicans abandoned the talks when infighting broke out within their own party, which includes dozens of fiscal conservatives.
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Many of those lawmakers, backed by the Tea Party, want the GOP leadership to keep their campaign pledge to reduce spending to 2008 levels, and they want nothing short of the $61 billion in cuts approved weeks ago in the House budget bill. The plan offered by Democrats would bring the overall reduction in the current budget to just $30 billion, including the $10 billion cut earlier in a series of short-term funding resolutions.
The negotiations came to a halt last week and have not resumed, a Democratic aide said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., blamed the GOP’s conservative faction for the shutdown threat.
“Apparently these extremists would rather shut down the government and risk sending our economy back into a recession than work with Democrats or even their own leadership to find a responsible compromise,” Reid said.
But Republicans are telling a much different story and say no offer has been presented to their party by the White House or Senate Democrats.
“They have not offered an additional $20 billion in cuts,” a top GOP aide told The Washington Examiner.
House GOP leaders point out that they alone have passed a budget plan and they are waiting, 40 days later, for the Senate to pass its own legislation. But the Senate lacks the 60 votes needed to win approval of either the House GOP bill or a purely Democratic proposal.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said Monday that Reid “once again is abandoning his responsibility to offer a credible plan to cut spending and fund the government for the rest of the year,” and has “failed to take our fiscal crisis seriously.”
The Tea Party, meanwhile, is stepping up the pressure on GOP leaders with plans for a March 31 “Continuing Revolution Rally” on the Capitol lawn, intended to remind Republicans not to abandon their campaign pledges.
“While the Congress continues business-as-usual with their short-term continuing resolutions, we will be there to continue our Tea Party revolution and demand they make the tough decisions we sent them there to make,” said the event’s organizers, the Tea Party Patriots. “They are testing the waters and waiting for us to go away. We’re not going away!”
