Government Shutdown

The Senate agreed to temporarily fund the government and provide disaster aid, potentially heading off an escalating partisan stalemate with just days left to avoid a government shutdown. The bill was approved 79 to 12 Monday. The measure still needs approval in the GOP-led House, which is on recess but could return for a vote. The agreement could defuse the partisan standoff that has been heading toward a showdown as both federal disaster aid and money to fund the government were set to run out by the end of the week.

WASHINGTON - Sending President Obama a bill Thursday that averts a government shutdown, Congress proved that it can, in fact, function. Not long ago, this was considered an unlikely outcome. Republicans in the House, trying to force Obama to accept deep cuts, had come close to shutting down the government before and appeared primed to do so again. But House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has united his rambunctious majority ever so tenuously around a strategy that, for now, sets aside the cycle of crisis politics to aim for long-range objectives.

WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers are returning to their day jobs after a month on the campaign trail, and will try to accomplish one of Congress' key tasks: funding the government. But they won't be here for long. The House is set to work eight days this month, and the Senate about a dozen. After that, lawmakers will resume the season's primary activity of campaigning to get reelected. The one must-do item on Congress' work order is passage of a bill to keep the government running past Sept.

WASHINGTON -- A stopgap measure to keep the government funded at a new, lower level cleared a final hurdle in Congress on Thursday and is headed for President Obama's signature, ending the threat of a government shutdown. The House quickly approved the measure, 318-109, following passage in the Senate on Wednesday, as both parties -- and the administration -- sought to avoid a disruptive closing of federal offices. Legislation is needed by March 27 when a temporary measure expires, and Obama is expected to swiftly sign it. The bill locks in the amount of the so-called sequester cuts on federal agencies, the across-the-board reductions that have begun crimping lawmakers' priority projects and home-state industries.

Dodging a shutdown at midnight, the House has passed a $915 billion spending bill to pay for core functions of the federal government, including defense, health, environmental programs and financial regulation. The passage of the massive package of appropriations bills was a rare move toward legislative normalcy and bipartisan cooperation in a divided Congress that has been living in perpetual crisis mode. By paying for operations through September, the bill will get the government off the cycle of short-term funding measures and, for now, take Congress off the cycle of fighting over spending level under perpetual doomsday threats.  The measure passed easily on a bipartisan vote of 296-121.

Weary of one last round of brinkmanship before the holidays, Congress reached a tentative deal late Thursday on a $1-trillion spending bill that would avert a government shutdown as both parties continued talks to extend President Obama's payroll tax break for workers. The contours of an agreement on the payroll tax holiday were taking shape as Democrats dropped their demand that a surtax on people making $1 million or more be imposed to pay for the payroll tax cut, which expires Dec.31.

Just because a government shutdown was averted at the last minute doesn’t mean that the all of the political and economic issues that swirl around the budget process are resolved. Here is a road map to what lies ahead. What has Congress done? Both the House and the Senate overnight passed short-term spending measures that keep the government running until next Friday. Passage followed a negotiated agreement between the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Democratic-run Senate on a longer-term spending plan for the rest of the fiscal year.

WASHINGTON - Congressional leaders reached a tentative budget deal with the White House on Tuesday that would avert a politically risky government shutdown right before the election. The six-month stopgap measure would keep the government running at current levels through March - dashing, for now, the hopes of conservative Republicans who want to make steeper cuts, including eliminating money for President Obama's healthcare law. Although the deal would end the threat of a stalemate that could be politically damaging for both parties, it does not address the looming "fiscal cliff" of tax increases and mandatory spending cuts that are scheduled to take effect after Jan. 1. Votes on the tentative deal are set for September, before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, clearing the postelection lame-duck session for the tax-and-spending debate.

Two hours before the federal government would screech to a midnight halt, House Speaker John A. Boehner, a onetime Cincinnati plastics salesman, faced a restless group of Republican lawmakers. The Republican leader did not have the news they wanted: a budget deal. But Boehner went into the Friday night meeting anyway. He talked for 45 minutes, building the case for compromise. And just when some in the Capitol basement conference room were starting to wonder, an aide slipped into the room.

A budget stalemate that gripped the nation ended just before a midnight deadline Friday as congressional leaders and the White House agreed to a package of spending reductions to avert a federal government shutdown. After working around the clock, Republican and Democratic negotiators emerged from a tense day of closed-door talks with a deal that would cut about $38 billion from domestic programs across the nation for the remaining six months of the 2011 fiscal year. Republicans dropped healthcare and environmental demands that had stalled agreement on the budget deal and, in return, the two sides agreed to hold separate votes later on other GOP goals, including cutting family planning funding.

This week, realizing that government actually does do some things people like, senators in both parties tried to undo some of the damage wrought by the sequester/fiscal cliff debacle. Their efforts were quickly undone, however, by the chronic dysfunction of the United States Congress.  Attempts were made to restore White House tours, maintain an efficient number of meat inspectors, keep up sane staffing of airport control towers, provide tuition help for members of the armed forces, undo cuts to military maintenance and take back many of the other across-the-board cuts that came about when the lawmakers failed to avert the $85 billion in automatic reductions that kicked in on March 1. In the end, though, fixing even the most idiotic cuts was put off so that yet another irresponsible political move could be avoided: shutting down the government.

WASHINGTON - It was bound to happen: As the "sequester" budget cuts are felt around the country, lawmakers are having second thoughts - and are trying to tinker with them. On a routine spending bill, senators filed more than 125 amendments that would have reopened the White House to tours, shielded meat inspectors from furloughs and kept air traffic control towers staffed, among other moves. The attempts to rearrange the across-the-board cuts filed by senators on both sides of the political aisle had stalled the measure, which is needed to keep the government running after March 27. Without approval of the stopgap spending bill, the government would shut down, a prospect lawmakers and President Obama have said they want to avoid.

House Republicans often complain that Senate Democrats have been lax on fiscal matters because they haven't approved a budget resolution since 2009. But those resolutions are largely symbolic; the real spending decisions are made in the dozen appropriations bills that Congress is supposed to pass by Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year. And on that score, the House GOP leadership failed miserably last year, and is about to do so again. This week the leadership plans to bring up a bill to fund the federal government's operations for the final six months of fiscal 2013.

WASHINGTON -- President Obama and congressional leaders huddled in the Oval Office on Friday morning but the last-ditch effort failed to produce a compromise to forestall $85 billion in automatic spending cuts all sides say they want to avoid.  The meeting, which lasted less than an hour, yielded no new plan to dodge a series of across-the-board budget cuts due to begin hitting most federal agencies and programs at midnight Friday....

WASHINGTON   - After weeks of increasingly dire warnings, the White House scrambled to adjust to the political and economic reality of deep and indiscriminate spending cuts that kicked in Friday and would, over time, hinder the economic recovery. In a sign that the warnings may have gone too far, President Obama sought to dial back some of the rhetoric. Most Americans, he said, won't immediately feel the effects of the complex process known as sequestration, which is expected to unfold like a slow-motion budgetary car crash.

WASHINGTON - With the "sequester" cuts all but certain, congressional Republicans are turning to the next battle with President Obama: locking in the cuts for the rest of the year in a strategy that is likely to face opposition in the Senate, and which could lead to a government shutdown. House Republicans meeting behind closed doors Wednesday appeared to coalesce around the next phase of their austerity campaign, despite divisions among lawmakers who have struggled to find a common message on the sequester cuts.

WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers are returning to their day jobs after a month on the campaign trail, and will try to accomplish one of Congress' key tasks: funding the government. But they won't be here for long. The House is set to work eight days this month, and the Senate about a dozen. After that, lawmakers will resume the season's primary activity of campaigning to get reelected. The one must-do item on Congress' work order is passage of a bill to keep the government running past Sept.

WASHINGTON - Congressional leaders and the White House have reached a tentative budget deal to avert a government shutdown and pay for federal operations into 2013. The six-month stopgap measure would keep the government funded at current levels previously agreed to by Republicans and Democrats - dashing, for now,  the hopes of conservatives who have sought to make steeper spending reductions, including eliminating funding for President Obama's healthcare law. While the agreement resolves a stalemate that could have led to a shutdown before the fall election, it does little to address the larger budget debate over expiring tax cuts and mandatory spending cuts scheduled to occur in the new year.