WASHINGTON – A half hour after its midnight deadline, Congress averted a government shutdown by approving a one-week stopgap spending bill that allows time to finalize a budget deal for the rest of this fiscal year that is expected to make the deepest annual spending cut in U.S. history.

 

“Some of the cuts we agreed to will be painful,” conceded President Barack Obama in an appearance shortly before the Senate and House votes. But he said negotiators “made sure that at the end of the day, this was a debate about spending cuts, not social issues like women’s health and the protection of our air and water.”

 

Under the framework for the longer-term agreement, Congress will make about $39 billion in spending cuts for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 – with the first $2 billion of those cuts made in the stopgap measure that expires Friday and gives congressional staff time to write the deal in legislative language and then vote on it.

 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (right), D-Nev., said the negotiations were “a grueling process” that arrived in the end at “a historic level of cuts.” House Speaker John Boehner (left), R-Ohio, said the deal capped “a long fight” for a spending plan that will “create a better environment for job-creators in our country.”

 

 

While details of the framework agreement were unclear Friday night, some Democrats said that the final package would not include riders in the House spending bill that would cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood and place limits on some environmental regulations. However, separate votes on those issues were expected.

 

The last-minute deal averted what would have been the first government shutdown in 15 years. That would have meant the closing of the Gateway Arch and many other national parks, furloughs for “non-essential” federal workers and the suspension of some key government services.

 

Shortly after the Senate approved the stopgap plan at about 11:18 p.m. Eastern time, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Congress needs to start addressing longer-term spending issues. “While these cuts will be painful, we must now turn our attention toward addressing our long-term debt and ensuring a future of fiscal responsibility,” he said.

 

About a half hour after the midnight deadline, the House voted overwhelmingly to approve the one-week stopgap
deal, 348 to 70. Some House Republicans grumbled that the nearly $40 billion in spending cuts fell short of the $61 billion in reductions approved earlier by the House. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the “substantial reductions” would be followed by “a much larger discussion of how we save trillions” in future budgets.

 

Earlier on Friday, Republicans and Democrats had cast their endgame debates in starkly different terms as they exchanged criticism for the delays in reaching an agreement.

 

While Reid claimed that House Republicans were holding up a spending deal by insisting on a rider that de-funded family planning initiatives, Boehner said the hangup was over the spending level rather than any particular social-policy rider.

 

“When we say we’re serious about cutting spending, we’re damn serious about it,” Boehner said after a meeting with House Republicans.

Short-term deal follows long day of debate

 

Before the one-week agreement was approved, the arguments in the Shutdown Blame Game had divided along party lines in the Missouri and Illinois congressional delegations, with both sides blaming the other for a possible shutdown and everyone contending that they wanted to avoid it.

 

“This is no longer about budget issues; it’s about bumper stickers,” charged Durbin. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., told the Beacon that according to Democrats in the negotiations, the last major sticking point was “Title X health-care funding — cancer screening and family planning money — which was one of the social policy riders of House Republicans.”

 

But Rep. Todd Akin, R-Town and Country, a member of the House Budget Committee, said, “My impression is the opposite. This is about how much money we’re going to cut; that’s what the big fight is about. I think John Boehner is standing up for what he believes is right.”

 

Akin told the Beacon that he backed the original House amendment that cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood but said he doesn’t think that is what’s holding up a deal on the level of spending cuts — either in a one-week stopgap or for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. “We’re talking a pretty big cut for a six-month period,” he said

 

But Reid told reporters that at the White House meeting, both parties had agreed to about $38 billion in spending reductions for that period. “I’ve been pushing my caucus to make some cuts, and we’ve gone not only halfway toward the Republican level but more than three-quarters of the way,” said McCaskill. “I think in Missouri that would be called a more than adequate compromise.”

 

Following Reid’s lead, Durbin blamed the stalemate on “a power struggle” among House Republicans that has forced Boehner’s hand in negotiations with Reid and President Barack Obama. Rep. William L. Clay, D-St. Louis, was among several House Democrats who went further, charging that Tea Party-inspired Republicans were engaging in “political blackmail” to hold Boehner to their positions on issues such as cutting federal funds to Planned Parenthood.

 

In a conference call with reporters Friday, Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-St. Louis, said, “This is not even a debate anymore about serious budget cuts. … There seem to be some ideological maneuvers on behalf of the Republicans to use this as an attempt to shut the government down.”

 

Saying that his office was being flooded with calls, Carnahan said, “A government shutdown is going to hurt families, it’s going to hurt seniors and businesses. In Missouri, it’s estimated that over 100,000 workers would have to go without paychecks. We don’t need to get to this point.”

 

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., also said he wanted to avoid a shutdown if at all possible, but he placed the blame squarely on Democrats for failing to take care of the 2011 budget issues when they controlled both houses of Congress last fall.

 

“We’re facing a potential government shutdown, thanks to President Obama and Senate Democrats’ failure to lead and their refusal to come to the table and support real spending cuts,” Blunt said in a statement. “We cannot continue spending money we don’t have, and we have a responsibility to ensure Washington is living within its means just like every family and job creator in Missouri.”

 

In a televised appearance Friday, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. — who said he remained optimistic that a shutdown might be averted — called on both sides to give a bit in the negotiations. Kirk, who has said he opposed the Planned Parenthood rider, said policy riders were “not central to the mission here,” and he said Democrats needed to give up more ground on the extent of budget cuts. He said the real battle should be over needed cutbacks in next year’s budget.

 

McCaskill agreed on the need for significant cuts but complained: “This is not a game of ping-pong where we’re hitting the ball up and down this hall from the House to the Senate, fighting over divisive social issues that, frankly, our country has struggled with for decades and will continue to struggle with.”

 

Akin and Rep. JoAnn Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, were among many House Republicans who urged the Senate to prevent a shutdown by accepting a six-month defense appropriations bill that the House passed Thursday, which included a one-week funding extension for the rest of the government.

 

“We are hearing from so many military families that we represent who are facing uncertainty on top of uncertainty” about receiving pay in the event of a shutdown, Emerson said in a House speech.

 

“The negotiators and staff members on both sides are working late hours and weekends” to try to reach a deal, Emerson said. “But I’m convinced it would be more helpful if we could find consensus instead of ripping apart a one-week [stopgap spending] bill that funds our troops.”

 

Members of Congress were expecting to remain in the Capitol until midnight Friday, and — if no spending deal is reached and a government shutdown begins — to work through the weekend to try to reach agreement.

 

McCaskill told the Beacon that she planned to have only “a bare-bones Senate staff” if there is a shutdown and that she will forgo her Senate pay during such a stoppage. “I don’t think it’s right that people all over the government are being furloughed and that we don’t make the same kind of sacrifices.”

Source: http://www.stlbeacon.org/issues-politics/280-washington/109469-shutdown-averted-at-last-minute