Budget Stances Harden as Deadline Nears for Shutdown

Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama in the White House on Tuesday spoke about the budget meeting with the Speaker of the House.

WASHINGTON ? In dueling news conferences just moments apart, President Obama and the speaker of the House, John A. Boehner, dug in their heels on Tuesday over terms of a budget deal to stave off a partial shutdown of the federal government as early as Saturday.

Mr. Obama warned of a public backlash over a shutdown and said there was no excuse for failing to pass legislation allowing agencies to carry on for the rest of this fiscal year, while Mr. Boehner said his side was determined not to be boxed in. But neither offered the other much of a way out, or gave any ground in the dispute over how much to cut.

Meanwhile, the Republicans? budget chairman in the House set forth a longer-range blueprint defining a new era of profoundly smaller government and steep tax cuts for corporations and individuals.

At an impromptu news conference at the White House, Mr. Obama said he was no longer willing to accept one short-term deal after another to temporarily keep agencies running. The Republicans had offered a one-week extension at a price of $12 billion in immediate spending cuts.

?I can?t have my agencies making plans on two-week budgets,? he said. ?What we are not going to do is once again put off something that should have gotten done months ago.?

Moments later, Mr. Boehner repeated again and again that House Republicans would demand ?the largest cuts possible.?

Negotiations ground on, with Mr. Boehner set to meet Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, in the afternoon and Mr. Obama saying he would summon them to the White House on Wednesday and Thursday if need be. ?We can?t have a my way or the highway approach to the problem,? Mr. Obama said.

As the news circulated in the morning that a White House meeting had produced no deal between Mr. Boehner and Mr. Obama, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said that if a shutdown was in the offing, the blame should lie at the feet of Republicans, who had rejected a Democratic proposal to cut $33 billion and leave the government open for the rest of the year.

?A deal with $33 billion in spending cuts is right there for the taking,? Mr. Schumer said in an e-mail. ?But the House leadership will need to stand up to the Tea Party.? Democrats also denounced the Republicans? long-term proposal.

House Republicans unveiled their longer-term plan on Tuesday, as the fight over current spending reached a full boil, in a move calculated in part to draw support from their Tea Party wing by offering steep cuts in taxes and spending in future years, and a far-reaching budget proposal for next year and beyond that cuts $5.8 trillion from anticipated spending levels over 10 years.

The plan, drafted principally by Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the Budget Committee, proposes not only to limit federal spending and reconfigure major federal health programs, but also to rewrite the tax code, cutting the top tax rate for both individuals and corporations to 25 percent from 35 percent, reducing the number of income tax brackets and eliminating what it calls a ?burdensome tangle of loopholes.?

At a news conference Tuesday on Capitol Hill, Mr. Ryan, surrounded by his fellow Republicans from the budget committee, alluded to the power of the large freshman class and its Tea Party contingent who have helped to propel the fiscal fight forward. ?The new people did not come here for a political career,? he said. ?They came here for a cause. This isn?t a budget. This a cause.?

In a news release issued shortly after the talks at the White House, Mr. Boehner said that no agreement had been reached, and that House Republicans remained open to extending the existing stopgap spending measure, which expires Friday, with another continuing resolution that would last one week and cut an additional $12 billion. (The proposal also includes language to bar federal and local financing for abortion services in Washington.)

Mr. Boehner added that ?Republicans? strong preference is that we instead pass a bipartisan agreement this week that resolves last year?s budget mess by making real spending cuts and keeps the entire government running through September.?

The administration accelerated preparations for a potential shutdown, asking agency heads to show their contingency plans to senior managers, according to a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said that the House leaders had not decided whether to move forward on their short-term plan, but that they would continue to press for significant cuts. ?The White House has increased the likelihood of a shutdown,? he said.

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