Budget Talks Sour, Dems Blame Tea Party for Stalemate as Deadline Looms
Published March 29, 2011
| FoxNews.com
AP
Sen. Charles Schumer speaks to reporters about budget negotiations March 2 on Capitol Hill in Washington.
The Capitol Hill rhetoric reached new levels of ugliness Tuesday as negotiations over some semblance of a federal budget gave way to finger-pointing, with Democrats blaming Tea Party freshmen for a potential government shutdown and Republicans calling those claims a fantasy.
Over the past few days, Democrats have pounded the argument that Congress would have been able to work out a budget deal long ago if not for the extreme demands of Tea Party-aligned lawmakers.
Congress has until April 8, the expiration date for the current short-term budget, to craft either another stopgap or a more substantive budget that lasts through the end of fiscal 2011, or face a partial Washington shutdown.
Hopes were relatively high last week that such a coming-together could happen, but lawmakers on both sides made clear Tuesday they've made scant progress.
"Unfortunately, there are a number of new people in the Congress who think that a compromise is a sellout," House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Tuesday. He said there's still room for compromise, but accused the "perfectionist caucus" -- his latest term for the Tea Partiers -- of dragging down the Republican leadership. Hoyer said he put the odds of a shutdown at "five or six" on a scale of 10.
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Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., also took to the floor Tuesday to accuse the Tea Party of scuttling negotiations over a spending package.
Republicans fired back, preemptively pinning blame on the Democrats for a possible government shutdown while singling out Hoyer and Schumer for their comments Tuesday.
"Senator Schumer is not part of the (budget) negotiations, and he is making up fairy tales trying to derail serious discussions on funding the government and cutting spending, because he believes his party would benefit from a government shutdown," said Mike Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
"At this point, the House has passed a bill to fund the government through the end of the year while cutting spending. The Senate has not -- and Senator Schumer's inaccurate rants won't change that," Steel said.
House Republicans weeks ago called for $61 billion in cuts from last year's spending levels, a target announced after Tea Party-aligned lawmakers complained an earlier proposal did not go far enough. Since then, Congress passed two stopgap bills which together cut $10 billion. White House budget officials have since indicated they'd be willing to put another $20 billion-$25 billion on the table, bringing total cuts to as much as $35 billion -- incidentally, the target originally cited by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., before House Republican leaders pulled back and called for $61 billion in cuts.
One senior Senate GOP aide said Republicans should, at this point, "take that number and run," and then resolve to cut more in the fiscal 2012 budget.
But as talks continue, mainly between the White House and House Republicans, lawmakers say there's no deal.
"There is not an agreement on a number," Boehner told reporters.
"Make no mistake, if the government ends up shutting down, it will be because Senate Democrats refused to offer a real proposal that cuts spending and because the White House flatly refused to lead," House Republican Leader Eric Cantor's office said in a memo Tuesday.
As talks sour, both sides claim they can't be held accountable since neither has a complete majority in Washington.
"It's self-evident we don't control Washington, or we wouldn't be having this problem," Hoyer said, arguing that Democrats would not be to blame if the government shuts down.
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