Budget battle came down to 3 men and their weaknesses

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) entered budget negotiations at the head of a rambunctious Republican majority. Quietly, though, he worried that conservative lawmakers might desert him if the deal he struck didn’t meet their expectations.

President Obama had his own problem: He was trying to change his public image in midstream, from America’s top Democrat to a chief executive immune from partisan squabbling.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) had watched his party lose its momentum. For all his power, his job had shrunk to defending Democrats’ past gains.

Last week, their first big public fight since Republicans took over in November played out in 3 a.m. meetings, angry press conferences and tense sessions at the White House — which hit their boiling point late Thursday night when Vice President Joe Biden lost his temper at Boehner. It ended with a late-night handshake at the Capitol and Republican cheers in a crowded basement.

The detailed story of that week — relayed Saturday by aides invested in portraying their man as the hero — shows that all three were trying to camouflage weaknesses with bluffing and public confidence. They settled only in the face of a shutdown — the one thing they feared more than giving in.

In the end, Boehner got the huge budget cut conservatives wanted. Obama got to take credit for bringing the sides together. And Reid got a chance — in a dispute over funding for women’s health groups — to rally a beleaguered Democratic base.

Outside the White House and Capitol, their long staredown had a serious cost.

For days, a city had been creakily, and expensively, preparing to shut itself down. And a country had watched in amazement: Was the U.S. government really fighting over whether to reauthorize itself?

Boehner’s problem

For Boehner, last week was a chance to prove his toughness, and conservative bona fides, to the fractious Republicans he leads.

His problem had been made clear a month ago. The House was set to vote on a stopgap budget to keep the country running, but 54 members of his caucus pressed the red button for “no.” The bill passed, but they sent Boehner a message: He didn’t have the unqualified support of all 241 House Republicans.

“If you don’t have 218, you’re not speaker,” one of Boehner’s close friends said, adding that they “cut his legs off.”

The roots of Boehner’s problem stretched back to last fall’s elections, which propelled him to power. On the campaign trail, Republicans promised that they would cut INR 4,397.33 billion from Obama’s budget proposal.

Now, there were 87 new freshmen in the Capitol, and many of them believed that would happen.

But it was a promise Boehner couldn’t keep. Democrats in the Senate rejected it out of hand.

As the last week began, Boehner was determined not to seem wobbly. In private meetings with Democrats, he repeated a mantra: “Nothing will be agreed to, until everything is agreed to.”

And so, nothing was.

Who’s essential?

As a shutdown drew closer, Office of Management and Budget employees began to work late nights, scarfing Five Guys burgers and cold, wilted french fries. The questions came in: Will I be paid? Can I still use my BlackBerry if I can’t come to work?

Unclear, they said. And no.

Other agencies began an awkward sorting process. Who was “essential,” and would work in a shutdown?

“Any furlough is not a reflection on you or your performance,” Labor Secretary Hilda Solis wrote in a memo, hinting at the sting of being “nonessential” in a town that defines people by their work. “I value every single one of you and the work you do.”

Outside Washington, the assignments seemed even more surreal. At Mojave National Preserve in California, workers warned visitors they’d have to leave within 48 hours of a shutdown.

Not that anyone would notice.

“If we were furloughed, we wouldn’t have the staff to find them anyway,” park employee Danette Woo said.

‘This is it’

As the stalemate dragged on into Thursday night, President Obama summoned both Reid and Boehner to the White House. All week, Obama had sought to appear as Washington’s peacemaker, not as a partisan warrior on the Democratic side.

But there was a problem: Boehner wouldn’t give in and make peace.

With almost 24 hours to go until the government shut down, Obama gave Boehner an ultimatum on the speaker’s push to include abortion-related restrictions in the bill.

“John, I will give you D.C. abortion. I am not happy about it,” Obama said, according to a Democrat and Republican in the Oval Office. Boehner had been pushing to include both the restriction of government funding on abortions in the District of Columbia and a provision that would have placed limits on funds going to nonprofit groups that provide abortion services nationwide, including Planned Parenthood.

With the D.C. provision in hand, Boehner continued to push the president, aides said.

“Nope, zero,” Obama told Boehner. “Nope, zero. John, this is it.”

And that was it — for a little while. Later, White House aides said, Boehner returned to the issue. Evidently, he had pushed Biden too far.

If Republicans didn’t buckle on this provision, an angry Biden warned, “We’re going to have to take it to the American people.”

Nonetheless, they were close to agreeing to a dollar amount, or so the White House thought. By the next morning, though, White House aides said Boehner’s staff appeared to be asking for more cuts.

Obama Demands Budget Deal to Avert Government Shutdown

President Barack Obama said he hopes lawmakers can reach a last-minute deal today to avert a government shutdown after a third round of talks with congressional leaders last night failed to end an impasse over the federal budget.

After meeting with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Obama said issues remained unresolved and he hoped for a breakthrough that would prevent a shutdown, set to begin at midnight tonight.

“I’m not yet prepared to express wild optimism but I think we are further along,” he told reporters. “My hope is, is that I’ll be able to announce to the American people sometime relatively early in the day that a shutdown has been averted.”

The president canceled a scheduled trip to Indianapolis, where he was to promote his energy policies. He had met with Reid and Boehner earlier yesterday and late on April 6 in an effort to reach an accord.

Without an agreement, the government would begin shutting down for the first time in 15 years. Roughly 800,000 “non- essential” federal employees would be furloughed, affecting a host of government services. National parks would close, those filing paper tax returns wouldn’t receive refunds, government permits would be unavailable, and most passport applications would go unprocessed.
‘Extremely Narrow’

Neither Obama nor Reid identified the outstanding issues. Reid said they were “extremely, extremely narrow,” yet “the sad part about it, we keep never quite getting to the finish line.” He said he is “not really confident” that a deal will be reached, though “I’m very, very hopeful.”

Boehner said in a statement with Reid that they had “narrowed the issues” and would “continue to work through the night to attempt to resolve our remaining differences.”

Concern that an impasse over the federal budget may lead to a shutdown helped push down stocks yesterday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 17.26 points, or 0.1 percent, to 12,409.49 at 4 p.m. in New York and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped 0.2 percent.

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s second- ranking Democrat, said yesterday that lawmakers are divided by provisions, known as policy riders, woven into a bill funding the government for the rest of this year. They would change administration policies on environmental regulations as well as funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions among other health services.
‘Policy Questions’

“It appears that the debate is no longer over deficit reduction,” Durbin said. “It has really devolved into a debate over policy questions that have nothing to do directly, maybe even indirectly, with the budget deficit that we face or the money we’re going to spend.”

Lawmakers had also been debating about $40 billion in cuts from the government’s $3.7 trillion annual budget.

Yesterday, the administration threatened to veto a House- approved measure that would keep the government open for business until April 15, cut $12 billion in spending and fund the Pentagon through Sept. 30, the end of the 2011 fiscal year. The administration called the measure a “distraction from the real work” of forging a compromise.

“Non-essential” federal workers face the prospect of going without pay during the impasse. Representative Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat, is advising federal workers living in his district just outside Washington to conserve cash, warning a shutdown could stretch into next week. With so much concern over the budget deficit, he said, lawmakers may not agree to provide federal workers with back pay as they have in the past.
‘Conserve Their Money’

“They’re going to have to conserve their money to make their mortgage and car payments -- they’re going to have to determine what are the essentials,” Moran said. He estimated that 100,000 workers in the Washington area may be furloughed.

Many government programs would continue during a shutdown, said Jeff Zients, deputy director of the White House budget office.

Social Security checks will continue to flow, the postal service will continue to deliver the mail, military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya will continue and the air traffic control system will continue to operate, Zients said.

“Generally speaking, services that are critical to safety of life and protection of property are excepted from a shutdown,” he told reporters. So too, he said, are programs that don’t rely on the budget bill being debated for their funding.
Getting Their Paychecks

Elected officials, including Obama, Boehner and Reid, would be paid as usual during a shutdown unless Congress changes the law. Democratic Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Joe Manchin of West Virginia all announced they would forgo their paychecks during a shutdown.

Soldiers, law enforcement officials and others whose jobs are deemed essential would continue to work, yet wouldn’t get paychecks until the budget impasse is resolved.

Obama said the dispute “could severely hamper the recovery and job growth.”

“We’ve been working very hard over the last two years to get this economy back on its feet,” he said. “For us to go backwards because Washington couldn’t get its act together is unacceptable.”