"Non-essential" federal employees will be getting an extended weekend if Republicans and Democrats in Washington don't reach a spending agreement by midnight Friday.
How long workers would be off the job is anyone's guess, as congressional negotiators and President Barack Obama continued to spar into the night Thursday.
Roughly one in four workers who collect federal paychecks could be furloughed in a government shutdown beginning Saturday. Military personnel and Postal Service workers are exempt from any layoffs.
On Thursday, the House passed a resolution that would keep the government running for a week and fund the Department of Defense through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
But Senate Democrats summarily rejected the military-pay plan, which cut $12 billion in short-term spending and curtailed abortion funding.
Obama called the bill a "distraction" and vowed to veto the measure if it got to his desk.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Democrats would be "happy" to pass a "clean" stopgap funding bill -- meaning an extension of current funding levels without any policy riders.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, responded that the Senate's refusal to pass the bill puts the Democrats in the position of blocking military pay during a shutdown.
"President Obama and the Democrats are effectively saying the military are 'non-essential' personnel," said one Republican insider.
Rep. Sandy Adams, R-Orlando, told Sunshine State News:
It's shameful for the president to call funding our troops a distraction.While our military men and women are fighting to keep America free in the face of three conflicts -- one of which he engaged in at the behest of the U.N. Security Council instead of the American people -- we have an obligation to make sure they are being paid."
Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, noted: "Our troops and their families have sacrificed too much already to become victims of the Senate Democrats failure to lead -- or even follow -- on a long-term bill to fund the government and cut spending."
Reid lashed back at Republicans for "focusing on ideological matters." He told reporters that the sticking point in negotiations involved GOP provisions on abortion and other nonspending measures introduced into the budget proposal.
Boehner said, Republicans were not proposing any deal-breaker and that all of these policy issues are continuing to be on the table.
Our goal here is to cut spending, not to shut down the government," he said.
Adams said the GOP-controlled House continues to uphold its end of Congress's budget-making responsibility.
"The House passed a long-term budget plan 47 days ago that would continue to fund the government at responsible budget levels, but Senate Democrats refuse to take action," she noted.
That GOP bill cut spending by $61 billion.
Democratic negotiators say they're willing to consider $33 billion in reductions over the same period.
Obama has complained that a budget agreement "could have gotten done three months ago."
But Republicans pointed out that Democrats previously controlled both houses of Congress, yet failed to even propose a budget for the current fiscal year.
The political and fiscal brinksmanship on Capitol Hill reflects a closely divided public. Recent opinion polls show American voters split evenly on who to blame for the impasse. A Washington Post poll released Monday showed 37 percent blame Democrats, 37 percent blame Republicans and 15 percent blame both parties.
Those figures differ significantly from 1995, when Republicans were widely criticized for a government shutdown during Bill Clinton's presidency.
This time around, both parties may be banking on what happened afterward. Clinton's "strong leader" ratings in the polls jumped from 37 percent before the shutdown to 52 percent subsequently.
And despite the bad press, Republicans held onto their congressional majorities in the 1996 elections that followed.
Republicans figure that independent voters, inspired by tea party rage over out-of-control spending, will be more inclined to swing their way now. In 1996, the federal deficit was less than 1.4 percent of the gross domestic product. It's now at 9 percent.
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See the U.S. Office of Management and Budget's "Shutdown Contingency Plan," with a list of affected and unaffected government services here.
http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/sites/default/files/Shutdown_Memo_04_06_11.pdf
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
