Budget Deal Reached to Avert Shutdown; Vote Set Next Week After 6-Day 'Bridge'
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WASHINGTON -- Congressional leaders and President Obama headed off a shutdown of the government with just hours to spare Friday night under a tentative budget deal that would cut nearly $40 billion from current federal spending this year.
After days of tense negotiations and partisan quarrelling, House Republicans came to preliminary terms with the White House and Senate Democrats over financing the government for the next six months, resolving a stubborn impasse that had threatened to disrupt federal operations across the country and around the globe.
Speaker John A. Boehner, who had pressed Democrats for cuts sought by members of the conservative new House majority, presented the package of widespread spending reductions and policy provisions and won a positive response from his rank and file shortly before 11 p.m. Both Democrats and Republicans proclaimed they had reached a deal and would begin the necessary steps to move the bill through Congress.
Democrats said that under the agreement, the budget measure would not include provisions sought by Republicans to limit environmental regulations and to restrict funding to Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions.
"This has been a lot of discussion and a long fight," Mr. Boehner said as he left the party meeting. "But we fought to keep government spending down because it really will in fact help create a better environment for job creators in our country."
Speaking from the White House after the Republican meeting, President Obama said that both sides had to give ground in reaching the bargain and that some of the cuts that Democrats accepted "will be painful."
"Programs people rely on will be cut back," said Mr. Obama, who said Americans had to begin to live within their means. "Needed infrastructure projects will be delayed."
In the closed door Republican session, according to people present in the room, Mr. Boehner described the plan as the best deal he could wring from Democrats and said the cuts -- an estimated $39 billion in reductions -- represented the "largest real dollar spending cut in American history."
Although both sides compromised, Republicans were able to force significant spending concessions from Democrats in exchange from putting to rest some of the vexing social policy fights that had held up the agreement.
First Published April 9, 2011 12:01 am
