Pres. Obama is speaking as I type. And CBS’s Chip Reid is now saying that the rider eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood is OUT of the bill. Thank God!
EDITOR’s NOTE: My earlier post was mistakenly deleted. I am adding it here since it will provide some context. This is copied off of Google since it still appears on search engines. JOE GANDELMAN
National Journal: White House Is Reviewing Terms of Deal To Avert Shutdown
by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Is a deal in sight that will avert what has seemed to be a near-certain government shut down? Is it possible there will be deal soon that House Speaker John Boehner can successfully sell to his party’s Tea Party members in Congress? Can the Democrats live with it? Will Planned Parenthood remain funded? The answers to all of these questions are “yes” according to the National Journal:
The likelihood of a war-time federal government shutdown—the first in American history—diminished dramatically on Friday night as all parties began reviewing, with the goal of approving, a broad array of cuts and a short-term bill to keep the government operating while the details are put into legislative language for full congressional action next week.
While leadership staff insist there is no deal yet, that caution belies significant progress in narrowing long-standing differences and the widening assumption in both parties that a shutdown will be averted and all that remains unknown is the precise procedural steps that will walk everyone back from the abyss.
Numerous GOP and Democratic sources on and off Capitol Hill tell National Journal that the outline of the deal is as follows: up to $39 billion in cuts from the 2010 budget, $514 billion in spending for the defense budget covering the remainder of this fiscal year, a GOP agreement to abandon controversial policy riders dealing with Planned Parenthood and the EPA, and an agreement to pass a “bridge” continuing resolution late Friday night to keep the government operating while the deal is written in bill form.
Note that this comes on a day when GOP maven Karl Rove and leading-in-the-polls for the 2012 Republican nomination Mike Huckabee argued it was time for Republicans to compromise since if the government shut down it would benefit Barack Obama and the Democrats. MORE:
House appropriators began meeting in Speaker John Boehner’s office about 7:45 p.m. EDT, a sure sign of preparing floor action for another stopgap spending bill, the seventh in a process that began last year when Democrats failed to pass the necessary spending bills to fund the government for this fiscal year.
The proposal under review could form the basis of an agreement on a six-month continuing resolution that averts a government shutdown of longer than a few days. The prospective measure would cut spending by about $39 billion from current levels, two aides said. It would not include a ban on federal funding for Planned Parenthood, but part of the arrangement would likely be an unspecified and symbolic procedural step intended to give Boehner and conservatives political cover on the issue, the aides said. Democrats appear to have accepted an increased level of cuts in exchange for the GOP dropping the rider.
Will there a be a deal? Or, in the end, will it be another example of this:
PAST CONTRIBUTOR.