WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, DNev., said Tuesday that he will introduce a temporary spending measure to keep the government operating into early April, an effort to buy time for negotiations on a longer-term agreement.
Reid said he is tapping his top aide to open private talks with the office of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, on a broader deal including further cuts to fund the government through the Sept. 30 close of the fiscal year.
“We need to sit down and have an adult conversation with them across a conference table and figure out how we’re going to fund the government for the rest of the year,” Reid told reporters in a conference call.
Congressional leaders of both parties are maneuvering over spending cuts as the prospect of a government shutdown in early March looms. Current spending authority expires March 4, and if Congress doesn’t act on a new spending plan by then, the government will shut down. Congress is in recess this week.
The Republican-led House on Saturday passed a $1.2 trillion measure that slashes $61billion in federal spending this year. The White House says President Barack Obama would veto the bill if it reached his desk.
Democrats who control the Senate have made it clear the measure won’t get that far. They are proposing to keep spending at current levels until the two sides can hash out an alternative.
“It is time to drop the threats and ultimatums, and work together on a path forward,” Reid said in a statement announcing his plans. “I am asking Speaker Boehner to simply take the threat of a government shutdown off the table, and work with us to negotiate a responsible, long-term solution.”
Boehner rejected Reid’s proposal for a stopgap measure without additional cuts, insisting as he has previously that any new funding bill contain more spending reductions.If Reid refuses to act on the Republicans’ measure, which would fund the government through Sept. 30, the House will take up a temporary one “that also cuts spending,” Boehner said in a statement.
“Senate Democratic leaders are insisting on a status quo that has left us with a mountain of debt and a stalled economy with unemployment near 10 percent,” Boehner said. “Republicans’ goal is to cut spending and reduce the size of government, not to shut it down.”
Boehner said Democrats “should stop creating more uncertainty by spreading fears of a government shutdown and start telling the American people what - if anything - they are willing to cut.”
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., made his own push for bipartisan talks on the budget dispute.
“A government shutdown is not an acceptable outcome, and I call upon Leader Reid to commit to a good-faith effort to work with us and take that threat off the table,” Cantor said in a statement.
Democrats argue they’ve already agreed to some cuts by embracing spending levels currently in place that are $41 billion below what Obama originally proposed.
Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Democrat, called Reid’s offer “an olive branch” and said freezing current spending levels represents “a huge cut that we’ve already put on the table.”
Signing on to that approach late last year as part of a yearend budget deal was “was painful to many members of our caucus,” Schumer said. Republicans and Democrats, he added, are “far apart, not on whether we should cut, but on what we should cut.”
Republicans counter that the spending measure now in effect locked in huge spending increases that occurred over the past few years.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Reid’s proposal showed Democrats “can’t find a single dime of federal spending to cut” and are “insisting on the status quo, even for a short-term spending bill.”
The White House said it neither wants nor expects a shutdown. Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday that Obama’s team agrees with congressional leaders that “we do not want a shutdown of the government and that we can come to an agreement that avoids that.”
The White House Office of Management and Budget, as well as other federal agencies, are prepared “for any contingency as a matter of course,” Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for the office, said in an e-mail. Still, “this is beside the point” because Obama and congressional leaders have said “no one anticipates or wants a government shutdown,” he said.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 02/23/2011