US lawmakers grope towards spending deal

WASHINGTON: US lawmakers, at war with each other and the White House over slashing spending, pressed ahead Tuesday with a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown as they groped for a final deal.

The House of Representatives, led by President Barack Obama's Republican foes, was on track to vote on a measure they crafted to fund the government through March 18 amid heated closed-door talks on a long-term compromise.

The legislation would keep funding levels for most agencies at last year's levels, but include some $4 billion in cuts drawn from proposed reductions in Obama's budget and a ban on congressional pet projects.

The House previously adopted a measure slashing some $61 billion in government spending, an amount the Senate's Democratic leaders and even some Republicans have balked at, setting the stage for a longer battle.

"To think that we're going to have significant cuts in spending levels, it's not going to be easy," said Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who called the short-term measure "a step in the right direction."

Democrats have warned that they doubt that will be enough time for all sides to agree on funding levels through the end of the fiscal year on September 30, and have floated a possible four-week measure.

But if the US Congress does not enact some sort of funding bill by midnight on March 4, the US government would go into a partial shutdown, a mostly mild disruption with potentially vast political implications.

A similar clash in late 1995 and early 1996 let then-president Bill Clinton to cast Republicans as radicals and surf the swelling US economy to an easy reelection -- a lesson the defeated party has not forgotten.

So Republicans have piled pressure on Democrats and sought to portray them as stubbornly rejecting deep spending cuts at a time when the bloated US deficit and expanding US national debt weigh on the minds of US voters.

"Americans are watching," said Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who called the vote "a chance to take a small first step toward growing the economy and helping create jobs."

Democrats have trumpeted a report released Monday by Moody's Analytics economist Mark Zandi who found that the Republican approach could cost some 700,000 jobs in the run up to the November 2012 election.

Boehner on Tuesday mocked Zandi -- a former adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain in 2008 -- as Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's "pet economist" and cited a study crafted by en economist at a conservative think tank at Stanford University rebutting those findings.

While much of the focus has been on Senate Democrats struggling to respond to the House approach, Boehner faces his own challenge in the form of nearly 90 newly elected Republicans who have signalled they are in no mood to compromise.

That could complicate efforts to negotiate a final compromise with the Senate, and have both chambers approve a spending measure, sending it to Obama, who has vowed to veto the $60-billion cuts.

All sides have said they want to avoid a government shutdown, and sought to pin the blame on their political foes if such an outcome disrupts many services and idles hundreds of thousands of government employees.

A Congressional report on the most recent shutdown -- a 21-day hiatus in late 1995 and early 1996 -- noted that it idled environmental cleanup efforts and led to millions of visitors being turned away from museums and national parks.