No US Government shutdown, yet

It seems like the US Government Shutdown 2011 is not materialized, YET. A U.S. government shutdown 2011 was averted at the last minute Friday night after the House and Senate reached a temporary spending agreement. It is said that approaching a midnight deadline Friday night, House, Senate, and Obama administration came to agreement on a budget, avoiding a government shutdown. But tough political fights remain.

Read more details on pending US Government shutdown.
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Federal Shutdown Averted With One-Week Band-Aid
A U.S. government shutdown 2011 was averted at the last minute Friday night after the House and Senate reached a temporary spending agreement.

The measure, which will keep the government running until Thursday, postponed an impending furlough of some 800,000 federal workers.

Friday’s “bridge” agreement calls for $39 billion in short-term spending cuts, and pushes off the contentious issue of abortion funding, which Republicans sought to block.

By Thursday, the House and Senate will schedule votes on a longer-term budget that will carry the government through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.

The news was greeted with a mixture of relief over a crisis averted, and frustration over continued wrangling that will spill into next week. And harsh rhetoric left its mark.

Throughout the afternoon leading up to the midnight deadline, Democrats said abortion funding was a crucial sticking point, as Republicans held fast to their demand to cut off Title 10 “women’s health” programs. Roughly 25 percent of Title 10 funds go to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion provider.

One-third of Planned Parenthood’s annual $1.1 billion budget comes from the taxpayers, and Democrats were equally determined to keep the money flowing. Both sides reportedly agreed to vote on the issue separately next week.

Earlier in the day, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., called the GOP position “extremist ideology” and accused Republicans of “pouting in the corner.”

Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., was even more vitriolic.

Speaking at an abortion rally Thursday in Washington, D.C., Slaughter said, “This is probably one of the worst times we’ve seen. … In ’94, people were elected simply to come here to kill the National Endowment for the Arts. Now they’re here to kill women.”

Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., blasted Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama for “hypocritical games.”

On Friday afternoon, Price, the House Republican Policy Committee chairman, assailed Democrats’ opposition to passing a troop funding bill and agreeing to fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year.

Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, said the blame for the protracted budget process lay “solely on the Democrats, who last year failed to write a budget and failed to pass one single appropriations bill.”

Senate Democrats had refused to take up this week’s House-passed stopgap bill that cut $12 billion in short-term spending and blocked the abortion funds.

Prior to the eleventh-hour agreement, Rep. Sandy Adams, R-Orlando, noted, “After failing to lead during the previous Congress and pass a budget, the same Democrats have once again shown that they are incapable of leading this country into anything other than astronomical debt.

“The House passed a long-term budget plan 48 days ago that would continue to fund the government at responsible budget levels, but Senate Democrats refuse to take action.”

That GOP bill cut spending by $61 billion.

Earlier in the week, Democratic negotiators said they were willing to consider $38 billion in reductions over the same period — just $1 blllion less than what was ultimately agreed to Friday night.

Either way, the figures were tiny in comparison to the budget deficit that is $1.6 trillion and growing.

Obama had complained that a budget agreement “could have gotten done three months ago.”

But Republicans pointed out that Democrats previously controlled both houses of Congress and the White House, yet failed to even propose a budget for the current fiscal year.

THE ODD COUPLE: BACHMANN AND REID

Though much of the rhetoric in the final hours was as predictable as it was harsh, there were a few off-script surprises from the right.

Even as Democrats accused tea party groups of pushing House Speaker John Boehner into “extreme” positions, one congressional tea party favorite took a more moderate stance.

“I am ready for a big fight that will change the arc of history. The current fight in Washington is not that fight,” Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., tweeted late Friday afternoon.

Earlier, Bachmann endorsed the idea of a “clean bill” that would delete the anti-abortion provision — the same proposal made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Another staunch conservative, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., made similar pleas to put the abortion fight off for another time.

But the Florida Alliance, a coalition of tea and patriot organizations, issued a scathing indictment of Democratic leadership as the clock ran down Friday evening:

“Sen. Harry Reid hypocritically claims that over $300 million is needed for Planned Parenthood, a private corporation, so women in his family can get ‘women’s health care.’ We agree with Sen. John Kyl: ‘Planned Parenthood doesn’t need a gift from the American Taxpayers to continue to provide abortions.’”

Meantime, Sarah Palin whipped up the social-network crowd, tweeting: “If we can’t fight to defund this nonsense now when we have the chance, do you think we’ll win the big fight on entitlement reform later on?”

Nelson, who is up for re-election in 2012 and faces a growing legion of Republican challengers, was asked earlier Friday if Democrats deserved a share of the blame for the impasse.

Sidestepping the question, he responded: “It is what it is. We are where we are.”

BUSINESS AS USUAL … FOR ANOTHER WEEK

The shutdown would have forced the closure of national parks and a host of federal agencies deemed “non-essential.” Some 800,000 workers would have been affected.

The temporary budget deal was a relief for NASA workers in Florida, where a government shutdown could have delayed the scheduled April 29 launch of the space shuttle Endeavor.

Similarly, the national parks will remain open, and other government agencies — ranging from the Small Business Administration to the FHA to the IRS — will be open for business as usual … for at least another week.

Worried about forced furloughs, the 600,000-employee American Federation of Government Employees filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration Friday, arguing that ordering employees to work during a shutdown without assurance of pay is unconstitutional.

At least one group — the Libertarian Party — wasn’t celebrating, and wasn’t going to lose any sleep over a shutdown.

“We want to end all federal activities that are not authorized by the Constitution, and we want to cut everything else as much as we can,” said executive director Wes Benedict.

“In 2000, the federal government spent $1.8 trillion. This year it’s expected to spend $3.8 trillion. Things are going the wrong way — fast.”
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Government shutdown 2011 avoided with 11th-hour budget deal
Approaching a midnight deadline Friday night, House, Senate, and Obama administration came to agreement on a budget, avoiding a government shutdown. But tough political fights remain.

At literally the 11th hour Friday night, House, Senate, and Obama administration avoided a government shutdown and came to agreement on a budget for the rest of the fiscal year that nobody loves but that all were willing to live with.

It doesn’t solve the nation’s debt and deficit problems, and it certainly doesn’t settle the non-spending policy issues that had bedeviled the process of getting to yes – abortion is only the most obvious.

Politically, it’s the first major illustration of tea party-fueled conservatism behind resurgent Republicans who took back the US House of Representatives in last fall’s elections. And as such, it sharply hints at the difficulty all factions face in trying to craft a budget for FY 2012 – which begins just a few months hence – within both major parties as well as between them.

Among the details:
Discretionary spending for the rest of FY 2011 is nearly $39 billion less than had been budgeted for the previous year and $79 billion less than Obama had wanted for 2011.

Controversial “riders” eliminating federal funds for Planned Parenthood and for EPA regulation of greenhouse gases linked to global climate change were set aside. Riders that did make it through prevent the use of federal or local funds to pay for abortion services in the District of Columbia; another rider lets District of Columbia students use federally funded vouchers to attend private schools.

Another stopgap measure
Because there was so little time left to avoid a government shutdown as the clock ticked past 11 p.m toward a midnight deadline, lawmakers also agreed to a stopgap measure covering the next several days until the spending measure for the rest of this fiscal year can be finished and signed into law.

Avoiding a government shutdown had become paramount for all but a few lawmakers willing to force the issue. Some 800,000 federal workers would have been furloughed. National parks would have closed. Many Americans might have seen a delay in receiving their income tax refunds. Government contractors wouldn’t have been paid.

Which side would have been most hurt by a shutdown is unclear. Fifteen years ago, Republicans and then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the GOP’s “Contract with America” took much of the blame.

Still, Obama is the nation’s chief executive charged with running the departments of government, and his job performance “has remained mostly stagnant since late February,” according to a Rutgers-Eagleton poll released Friday. Just 46 percent of those surveyed gave him an “A” or “B” grade on job performance. A shutdown certainly wouldn’t have improved his standing with voters, nor would it have helped his recently-announced reelection bid.

“The largest spending cut in history”
In a statement shortly after the budget agreement was reached, Obama called it “the largest annual spending cut in our history.”

“Like any worthwhile compromise, both sides had to make tough decisions and give ground on issues that were important to them. And I certainly did that,” Obama said.

“Some of the cuts we agreed to will be painful. Programs people rely on will be cut back. Needed infrastructure projects will be delayed. And I would not have made these cuts in better circumstances,” he said. “But beginning to live within our means is the only way to protect those investments that will help America compete for new jobs – investments in our kids’ education and student loans; in clean energy and life-saving medical research. We protected the investments we need to win the future.”

“As you all know, this has been a loud discussion and a long fight,” House Speaker John Boehner said in announcing the agreement. “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.”

By most accounts, Boehner finishes this critical stage in the government spending process in a stronger political position.

“In the end, Boehner got far more than he gave up, and far more than Obama, [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid and the Democrats were initially willing to offer,” write John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman at Politico.com. “It sets the stage for a stronger hand for Boehner as he enters politically perilous fights to raise the debt ceiling and pass 2012 spending bills.”
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Source
http://www.csmonitor.com/