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“I’ve heard the speaker of the House refuse to confirm that number, that’s fine. We don’t need the speaker to confirm that number at the podium,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters on a press call, adding that as long as Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was still at the negotiating table he could say what he wanted to the press.
Schumer said both parties would have to work through the weekend to hammer out any deal, with only one week left before the current stop-gap measure expires and the government shuts down.
Late Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden announced Republicans and Senate Democrats had accepted a figure of $33 billion in additional cuts. By Thursday morning, Boehner had rejected that a number had been set.“There is no agreement,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said Friday. “Nothing will be agreed to until everything is agreed to. And Sen. Schumer spends a lot of time talking at podiums considering he is not actually at the negotiating table.”
Still, Senate leadership seemed cautiously optimistic a compromise could be struck by the April 8 deadline. But they also continued their week-long campaign against the tea party — a strategy they’ve openly embraced to both pressure Boehner and position themselves as the innocent party if shutdown is not averted . Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) mocked the attendance, reportedly of around 200 people, at a Thursday tea party rally on the Hill: “There were tens of them here yesterday — that’s a chosen word, tens of them.”
With or without public agreement over whether a spending-level number has been reached, negotiators still have a lot of work, and not that much time, to decide where and how cuts will be made.
Also on the table are the litany of policy riders House Republicans tacked on to their spending measure, including provisions to pull government funding for Planned Parenthood, curb the power of the Environmental Protection Agency and siphon off funding for public broadcasting.
Reid reemphasized Friday the position — taken even more strongly from the White House than Congressional Democrats — that those particular riders would be non-starters.
“We’re going to have a full discussion on riders,” Reid said. “The riders that are ridiculous in nature, and most of them are, have no chance … there are some places we’re not going to go,” noting continuing government support of Planned Parenthood and NPR as personal priorities as well as of his caucus. Earlier in the call, Reid said EPA riders were “unacceptable.”
Lawmakers from both sides have said they will not pass another temporary spending resolution — that it’s a deal to fund the government through the end of this fiscal year or no deal.
Reid did throw a small wrinkle into that calculus Friday, however, saying that if negotiators were almost completely set on a compromise by Friday and needed a few more days to go through procedural formalities, Congress could pass a short-term spending measure to buy a bit more time, much like it did last December when it passed a 3-day bill to wrap on the longer-term deal that expired in March.
“The only way we’d have a short-term CR is if it were necessary to finish paperwork of any deal we might make,” the majority leader said.
Sources: http://www.politico.com
