Pressure Builds for a Deal on Stopgap Funding

Stalled talks on the federal budget impasse got new life Friday, but fell short of an agreement that would reopen the partially closed federal government after a record-breaking four-day shutdown.

The new negotiations between the White House and the congressional Republican leadership broke off late Friday after GOP officials rejected a proposal for a new stopgap funding measure that would have pledged the two sides to try to balance the budget in seven years while leaving the details on how they would do so ambiguous.

Both sides said conversations would continue, but it was unclear when.

The federal government’s spending authority ran out Tuesday, prompting authorities to furlough 800,000 workers. Normally the Congress and President agree to stopgap funding measures to keep the government operating while the budget is completed, but not this year. President Clinton vetoed the so-called continuing resolution because it contained language locking him into a Republican plan to balance the budget in seven years.

The proposal under discussion on Friday called the seven-year timetable a “goal” that would be achieved through using either the conservative economic assumptions of the Congressional Budget Office or some other set of “mutually acceptable” assumptions. The choice of economic assumptions has been a fundamental sticking point in the impasse, because the selection of numbers determines how deeply the budget will need to be cut.

Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Budget Committee, said goals “are not the deal. It has to be a done deal.” This latest plan “was not really very different than what we’ve been talking about for the past several days,” he said.

And Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said the advocates of the plan were talking “about goals, time frames and a lot of ambiguous language. We’ll just have to look at it. It’s going to take awhile.”

Pressure for an agreement has been rising steadily.

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Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.), a moderate who was a key advocate of this latest proposal, said many members on each side “have come to the realization that there’s no more gain” to be had. Any more delay in resuming federal operations and “the American people will just get confused and say a pox on both of us,” he said.

Officials said the coming of Thanksgiving week has raised pressures because members don’t want to go home to face angry constituents. And a long delay would threaten the benefit checks that the Department of Veterans Affairs is due to send Tuesday to 3.3 million veterans and survivors.

White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta presented the proposal to Kasich and Peter V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

“We’ve got some language that we feel should be acceptable to both sides,” White House Press Secretary Michael McCurry told reporters on Friday evening.

With the huge Republican-designed budget bill poised for final passage today, moderates on both sides have begun to view the weeklong battle over the temporary spending issue as an embarrassment that offered scant gain to anyone and stood in the way of resolving the larger spending issues.

One senior Democratic aide contended that a number of top Republican leaders--including Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), Domenici and Dole--had come to the view that it was time to move on from the fight over the temporary spending bill. “Only the Speaker is holding out,” he said, referring to House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

A new temporary spending bill that passed the Senate Thursday night, and cleared the House the evening before, was not sent to Clinton on Friday as the talks resumed.

The President had signaled he would veto the measure because it still contained the seven-year GOP timetable to eliminate the deficit, keyed on conservative economic assumptions. Congressional staff members were saying the bill was withheld on Friday because of rising sentiment for compromise.

A group of 40 Republicans and 39 Democrats signed a letter proposing a spending bill that would embrace a seven-year timetable for balancing the budget, but “without any preconditions.” They also suggested the measure say that the budget “should” rather than “must” be based on Congressional Budget Office economic projections.

“There is a great deal of support in the Democratic caucus for us to reach an agreement,” said Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), the chief Democratic sponsor.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said it would “allow both sides to save a little face.”

“Our letter is serving as the icebreaker to break the logjam,” Upton said late Friday. “There seems to be movement again. People are talking to each other on both sides of the Capitol.”

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Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee was busy drafting a scaled-back continuing resolution that would provide funding to resume some government services, including processing applications for Social Security and Medicare benefits and veterans’ pensions. This is expected to be put up for a vote on Monday.

And U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected a federal union’s motion that he bar the government from requiring employees to work during the shutdown without the assurance of pay. The order was sought by the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union.

The Justice Department had argued that the precedent for the furloughs was well established, and that the government has repaid workers in all previous cases. The Republican leadership has promised to fully compensate all federal workers.