Lawmakers bicker over budget as shutdown looms

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic and Republican leaders traded reprehend on Friday in a budget impasse that threatened to coop up down the government within hours and vain hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

With a midnight deadline looming, President Barack Obama’s aides and lawmakers struggled conducive to a deal over government funding notwithstanding the rest of the fiscal year, what one. ends September 30. But the two sides could not even agree without interrupti~ what issues were holding up each agreement.

Democrats said they were at difference over federal funding for birth command. Republicans said spending cuts were the delivering.

Without an agreement, money to produce the federal government for the next six months would run out at midnight ~ward Friday and agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service would arise a partial shutdown.

There was vocable from the Republican camp that some progress was made in last-note talks. But a phone call between Obama and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the head Republican in Congress, yielded “not at all resolution,” a Republican aide said.

It was unclear whether a deal, verily for a few extra days of stopgap funding, could have ~ing struck in time. Obama scrapped a lineage weekend trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, to stay home and admonisher events.

The bitter political fight raised questions surrounding the ability of Obama and a divided Congress to deal by bigger issues looming down the track, from raising the federal debt ceiling to reining in package deficits, as the 2012 presidential choice campaign gathers steam.

“They’ve got to subsist laughing at us right now” in China, said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry. “How formidable that the United States of America be possible to’t make a decision.”

The direction of the world’s solitary remaining superpower has been consumed in quest of days by the budgetary infighting that could conduct large swathes of government to a standstill.

The White House said a shutdown would idle about 800,000 federal government workers and could slow the U.S. economic recovery. Vital services such as defense, body of rules enforcement, emergency medical care and mien traffic control would continue.

Without a deal, crowd official websites would darken and furloughed powers that be workers would be required to flexure off Blackberries. Trash would go uncollected in Washington, and national parks and monuments like the Statue of Liberty in New York would conclude.

Investment firm Goldman Sachs estimates a ruling power shutdown lasting more than a week could cost the economy billion in missed federal spending, dragging down growth.

AT ODDS

Republican and Democratic aides said negotiators have agreed to billion in cuts still remain at odds over where they would be dropped. Republicans are resisting a Democratic scheme to cut .7 billion from defense.

Reid related the final issue was a Republican push to bestow states greater discretion over federal funds earmarked on the side of birth control and women’s soundness clinics. Democrats say that would bestow Republican governors license to block those funds.