Deal made to avoid U.S. government shutdown

[clearvision]

news-press.com:

Perilously close to a government shutdown, the White House and congressional leaders reached out for a possible deal to cut tens of billions of dollars in federal spending and avert the closure, officials said tonight.

House Republican leaders summoned their rank and file to a late night meeting for what aides said would be an update on the talks.

Democrats said they were reviewing the details of a possible tentative agreement.

The developments unfolded as the administration readied hundreds of thousands of furlough notices for government workers and warned that federal services from national parks to tax-season help centers would be shuttered without a deal by midnight.

[clearvision]

Any agreement was likely to include spending cuts in the range of $38 billion to $40 billion while funding the government through the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.

 

Republicans also pushed for dozens of non-spending measures favored by conservatives, but it seemed likely most of them would be jettisoned.

[Chickadee]

Friday night, sure enough. That's the time to announce any big news item you don't want John Q Public to notice too much--whether Repub or Demo.

[SrWoodchuck]

Really d-i-s-a-p-p-o-i-n-t-e-d!

 

Get Boehner out & move someone in that owns a pair to do battle.......Bachmann?

 

It was estimated that the savings per day for unused Federal government buildings would have been $ 1.2 million. Congress was not going to get paid.

 

What a bunch of Shiite!

[Sabre86]

Boehner folds like a cheap suit, again.

 

When you spend more time wiping your eyes than your job, you will always be steamrolled by the opposition.

[Valin]

Boehner folds like a cheap suit, again.

 

When you spend more time wiping your eyes than your job, you will always be steamrolled by the opposition.

 

 

NY Times: Deal at Last Minute Averts Shutdown; $38 Billion in Cuts to Spending This Year

 

CARL HULSE

April 8, 2011

 

 

WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders and President Obama headed off a shutdown of the government with less than two hours to spare Friday night under a tentative budget deal that would cut $38 billion from federal spending this year.

 

(Snip)

 

Democrats said that under the agreement, the budget measure would not include provisions sought by Republicans to limit environmental regulations and to restrict financing for Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions. But Mr. Boehner said in a statement that the agreement included a restriction on abortion financing in Washington.

 

(Snip)

 

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 $38 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 for putting to rest some of the vexing social policy fights that had held up the agreement.

 

(Snip)

 

 

________________________________________________________________________

 

Question....When is John Boehner going to grow a pair?

[Valin]

From the WSJ

 

Key elements of the deal that averts a government shutdown:

 

* Sets discretionary spending for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, at $1.049 trillion. That is $39 billion less than was budgeted for 2010 and $79 billion less than President Obama had requested. House Republicans had wanted $22 billion in additional cuts.

* Includes $513 billion for defense – less than Republicans and President Obama wanted but more than the $508 billion provided in 2010.

* Drops Republican-backed provisions that would have ended funding for the new health-care law, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and National Public Radio.

 

* Drops Republican-backed provisions that would have barred funding for Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases and for the Federal Communications Commission to implement "net neutrality" rules.

* Bans the use of funds for the transfer of prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba to the U.S. mainland.

* Calls for the Senate to take up-or-down votes on separate bills to cut off funding for the health-care law and to turn federal aid to family-planning programs into block grants to the states.

 

* Bans the use of any public funds – federal or local – to pay for abortions in the District of Columbia.

* Re-establishes a school voucher system for the District of Columbia, a longtime cause of House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio). The program provides low-income children with vouchers to attend a school of their parents' choice.

* Includes a mandate calling for an annual audit of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had been created by last year's Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law. Republicans have been widely critical of the law.

[Valin]

The Right Scoop: Bachmann disappointed Boehner didn’t fight

[Valin]

The Corner: Boehner Wins Big

Andrew Stiles

April 9, 2011 2:21 A.M.

 

President Obama’s 2011 budget called for a spending increase of $40 billion. Tonight, he touted a bipartisan agreement on “the largest annual spending cut in our history” — some $38.5 billion [emphasis added]. All told, he got $78.5 billion less than he originally requested.

 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) didn’t want to cut anything at first. But bowing to political reality, eventually ponied up about $4.7 billion in cuts. He ended up with $33.8 billion less spending than he wanted. And he called it an “historic” accomplishment. (Not surprisingly, the left is appalled).

 

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), on the other hand, initially proposed $32 billion in spending cuts. House Republicans, led by an undaunted freshman class, bumped that number up to $61 billion ($100 billion off the president’s budget), before settling on $38.5 billion. That’s $6.5 billion more than Boehner asked for to begin with, and $5.5 billion more than the $33 billion that Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats claimed had been agreed to less than two weeks ago. It remains to be seen how much of that will be cuts to discretionary spending, but all told it would appear that we’'ll see a substantial reduction in baseline spending that will yield hundreds of billions in savings over the next decade.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

You're Kidding Right?

Andrew C. McCarthy

April 9, 2011 8:55 A.M.

 

With due respect, I think those who are praising the budget deal are deluding themselves. Under circumstances where we are trillions of dollars in debt, the GOP just caved on its promise to cut the relative pittance of $61 billion in spending because it’s just not worth fighting for more than the half-pittance of $40 billion Democrats claimed was their drop-dead number. “Drop dead” meant daring Republicans to shut the government down (which, as we know, doesn’t actually shut the government down). The Republicans blinked.

 

For me, this is no surprise — as I’ve said several times (see, e.g., here and here), I don’t think they’re serious. But I want to make a point about how strange this praise of Boehner & Co. is. A mere four months ago, the big controversy in conservative and Republican circles was whether the GOP had reneged on their vaunted pledge to cut $100B in spending in the current fiscal year because they had seemingly come down to $61B. As I noted at the time, there was no question that, if you looked at the fine print of the pledge, the commitment was $61B — but that if you looked at reality, both $61B and $100B were laughably unserious. No matter. Folks around here pooh-poohed my criticism and insisted that a $61B pledge was a sober first step, showing real fortitude about getting our fiscal house in order.

 

So now they’ve stopped short, significantly short, of that purportedly serious step, and the reaction is, “We won!” You’ve got to be kidding me. The only thing Boehner won is future assurance that GOP leadership can safely promise the moon but then settle for crums because their rah-rah corner will spin any paltry accomplishment, no matter how empty it shows the promise to have been, as a tremendous victory.

 

(Snip)