President Obama spoke to reporters at the White House after meeting with Speaker John A. Boehner and Senator Harry Reid.
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
Published: April 6, 2011
President Obama emerged from an Oval Office meeting with Congressional leaders on Wednesday night with no breakthrough on the budget stalemate, but he said the 90-minute discussion had helped to “narrow the issues” that are outstanding.
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Philip Scott Andrews/The New York Times
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner spoke to reporters after their meeting with Mr. Obama on Wednesday night.
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In brief remarks to reporters at the White House, Mr. Obama made it clear that he and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had not been able to bridge the divide between House Speaker John A. Boehner, the top Republican, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. Mr. Obama said the two sides would “work through the night” to try and reach a deal that could avert a shutdown of the federal government on Saturday, when the authority to spend money expires.
“In the morning, I will check in with the respective staffs,” Mr. Obama said. “If we haven’t made progress we are going to go at it again.”
Mr. Reid and Mr. Boehner appeared briefly together in front of reporters after Mr. Obama’s remarks. Both men described the nighttime conversation as “honest” but said a deal between them remained elusive.
“I have confidence that we can get this done,” Mr. Reid said. “We are not there yet.”
Mr. Boehner said that “I do think we made some progress.” But he said he wanted to make it clear that “there is no agreement on a number and there is no agreement on the policy side.”
The fact that the two Congressional leaders appeared together — even if only briefly — suggested that the meeting with Mr. Obama had managed to dispel some of the rancor that has characterized the public debate over the past several weeks. But the president and the lawmakers made it clear that there remain divisive issues that separate the parties as they seek to avoid a government shutdown.
As he did earlier in the day, Mr. Obama said a shutdown would impact real people and must be avoided.
“It would be inexcusable, given the relatively narrow differences, when it comes to numbers, between the two parties that we cant get this done,” Mr. Obama said.
The meeting, called Wednesday afternoon by Mr. Obama, underscored the drama in the nation’s capital as the White House and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill spent the day pointing fingers at each other in advance of a possible government shutdown on Saturday. The government’s authority to spend money runs out at midnight on Friday night.
The meeting was called after a day of pointed sparring between Democrats and Republicans, with Mr. Boehner accusing Mr. Obama of failing to lead in the budget negotiations, while the president said Republicans had injected politics into the budget negotiations.
And with little solid progress in resolving the fight, House Republicans moved ahead with a one-week budget extension, including more cuts, that the White House has already rejected. Republicans hoped that passage of the measure would put pressure on Democrats in the Senate and on Mr. Obama to make concessions on spending cuts and policy changes that Republicans want in exchange for a final budget deal. But administration officials warned that a shutdown would lead to the layoffs of as many as 800,000 federal employees and hobble agencies that offer help to small businesses and homeowners.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Reid took to the Senate floor to excoriate Republicans for not agreeing to compromise budget proposals by the Democrats.
Mr. Reid accused Republicans of seeking a “shortcut around doing our jobs” by proposing another one-week, stop-gap funding measure to keep the government operating.
The White House meeting came after a group of 16 Democratic senators sent a letter on Wednesday to Mr. Boehner, urging him to avoid a government shutdown because it would distract from the need to confront the nation’s longer-term fiscal challenges.
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