We’re hours away from a budget shutdown and apparently Republicans and Democrats can’t even agree on what still separates them.
After negotiators met at the Capitol until 3 a.m. without reaching a deal, Democrats emerged to say that the bargainers are in agreement on everything except for GOP plans to eliminate funding for family planning, such as Planned Parenthood clinics.
“Their unwillingness to bend on that issue is the only thing between us and a deal to keep the government open,” one Senate Democrat told Politico.
House Republicans said that’s wrong, that the lawmakers are “at an impasse largely over the size of the spending cuts — and their composition.”
So, how pathetic is that?
Longtime journalist and CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer put it this way: “This is a shameful episode in the history of the Congress. And I think if this government does shut down for any length of time, people are not going to look for who to blame, they’re going to blame all of them.”
Here’s one figure that should shame all those involved in this budget mess: while they’re fighting over $61 billion in cuts to the 2011 fiscal year budget, which now appears to have been whittled down to potential agreement on $32 billion to $35 billion, the CBO just reported that the deficit for March – for just one month – was $189 billion.
That makes me believe that the big fight over big numbers in the 2012 budget will be a complete exercise in futility. How could Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s bold budget plan possibly serve as a starting point – the first step toward a grudging compromise – given the shenanigans we’ve seen this past week over a relatively insignificant budget truim?
Over at the Washington Post, Ezra Klein said in his blog this morning that the fight that reaches a crescendo tonight is only the opening act for a bloody battle over the ’12 budget.
Klein said: “The problem isn’t just the policy. What the two parties are trying to prove about themselves, and about their relationship going forward, is very big. John Boehner is trying to convince Republicans in the House and Republicans in the country that they can trust him, that he’s conservative enough and steely enough to represent their interests in negotiations with the Democrats.
“And Democrats are trying to show that they will not be rolled over in negotiations simply because the Tea Party is unwilling to compromise, that they still control the Senate and the White House and they plan to act like it. These negotiations are really about the next negotiations — and the negotiations after that. Both parties worry that if they compromise now, they only embolden the other side later. And later is when the stakes get really high.
“For that reason, more than a few observers and participants have suggested to me that perhaps a shutdown tonight would be healthy. Better, they say, that Democrats and Republicans test what happens if they refuse to compromise now, when the consequences can be contained, than later, when the fight will be over the debt ceiling and the consequences could be catastrophic.
“That they may be right is a depressing commentary on the forces buffeting our political system right now, and the very real, very large risks they pose to the country.”
Well said.
