US PRESIDENT Barack Obama met with congressional leaders for the third time in as many days yesterday afternoon and scheduled a fourth appointment for last night in a last-minute bid to avert a partial government shutdown from midnight tonight.
Mr Obama said he had a “productive” second meeting with House speaker John Boehner and Senate majority leader Harry Reid on Wednesday night. “If we’re serious about getting something done we should be able to complete a deal and get it passed and avert a shutdown,” he said.
But the mood soured yesterday, after Republicans announced they would pass a stopgap Bill in the House, which was certain to be defeated in the Senate. The White House said Mr Obama would in any case veto it.
The Republican resolution, which passed in the afternoon, would fund the federal government for one week only and would cut $12 billion (€8.4 billion) in programmes. But it would guarantee the Pentagon’s budget for the remainder of the fiscal year.
Republicans refer to this legislative ploy as the “soldier-funding Bill” to portray Mr Obama and Senate Democrats as unpatriotic for opposing it. “For them to want to disguise their bad proposal by hiding behind our troops is really a disservice to our troops,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker.
“This Bill is a distraction from the real work that would bring us closer to a reasonable compromise for funding the remainder of and avert a disruptive federal government shutdown that would put the nation’s economic recovery in jeopardy,” said the White House.
The White House was also reportedly angered by Republican accusations that Mr Obama travelled to Philadelphia and New York on Wednesday to promote his chances for re-election.
Members of Congress will continue to receive their salaries in the event of a shutdown, while pay for the military will be suspended until the closure ends.
On the Senate floor, Mr Reid said he was pessimistic about prospects for a deal. The dispute is “no longer on how much savings we will get on government spending”, the majority leader said. “The only thing holding up an agreement is ideology.”
Republicans are insisting all funding to Planned Parenthood be cut. The group provides birth control and cancer tests – the only medical care received by millions of poor women. A separate branch of Planned Parenthood, which receives no government assistance, performs abortions, which is why Republicans want to destroy it.
The Republicans are also using the battle of the budget to block money for Mr Obama’s healthcare Bill, to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from fighting global warming and to prevent enforcement of last year’s financial reform Bill.
Mr Boehner said the White House did not provide “a single policy justification” for threatening to veto the resolution. “We will send this Bill to the Senate today,” he said, “confident that those Democrats who believe it is important to fund our troops and make real spending cuts will prevail upon Sen Reid and our commander-in-chief to keep the government from shutting down.”