President Obama, after a high-stakes meeting Wednesday night with congressional leaders at the White House, called the discussion “frank” and “constructive” but said no budget deal was reached.
“If we are serious about getting something done we should be able to complete a deal, get it passed and avert a shutdown,” Obama told reporters in the White House briefing room, though it remained unclear how the two sides would forge such an agreement.
A few minutes later outside the White House, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner stood side by side to update reporters on the talks.
“We’re not there yet,” Reid said, but both sides were committed to hammering out a deal and keeping the government running past the Friday deadline.
“No one wants a shutdown,” Boehner said, adding there were “honest differences” and their staffs will work to get the budget issue resolved.
“We’ve narrowed the issues significantly,” Reid said.
The government already is operating on a short-term spending measure because Republicans and Democrats haven’t been able to agree on how deeply to cut and what to ax, and as a precaution, House Republicans are preparing to bring yet another stopgap budget bill to the floor Thursday to buy more time for negotiations on a long term bill.
The proposal would be the third short-term budget bill in two months. The prospect of voting on another stopgap has frustrated lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, some of whom have vowed to oppose one. But while dozens of GOP members defected the last time around, House Republican Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News he has enough GOP support to pass this bill without any Democrats.
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3 Responses
Shutdown, PLEASE shutdown!!!
We don’t need the govt as it is. People may be inconvenienced for small things but this has to happen.
The democrat congress was supposed to do this about nine months ago but they didn’t so now its the MEN who have to do something.
let is shut down for 1 month and help correct are enormous
budget deficit
The shutdown will accomplish nothing. It backfired for the GOP in 1995 and there is no reason to assume it’ll work this time. It will anger and inconvenience innocent people. It costs more money in the long run due to costs incurred in recovering from the shutdown. Also Obama is a better communicator than the GOP so it is more likely that the public will side with the president and force the GOP to back down than the other way around.