The political fingerpointing continued apace Tuesday as the threat of a federal government shutdown appeared to grow.
Furthering an effort to pin a shutdown, if it happens, on Democrats, Republicans late Monday evening proposed a new short-term spending plan that would fund the government to the end of the 2011 fiscal year which ends in September. The proposal is on the House Appropriations Committee website.
The Republican plan would extend funding of the government for one more week though the military would be an exception. It would be funded for the rest of the fiscal year.
But there really isn't any more need to discuss the proposal since it's probably not going anywhere.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday morning, White House press secretary Jay Carney indicated the Obama Administration wasn't even considering the proposed stopgap because the president would rather get an agreement on spending for the rest of the year.
To that end, President Obama hosted both Republican and Democratic congressional leaders at the White House Tuesday to try and get the sides to an agreement.
Democrats wanted Republicans to move off their insistence that a spending agreement reflect the $61 billion in spending cuts as well as a number of restrictions on domestic policy, like a ban on Planned Parenthood funding, contained in HR1, legislation the House passed in February. Democrats like their spending cut proposal of $33 billion more and hate the Republican policy riders.
Reflecting the Democratic resistance to the latest GOP proposal at a Tuesday morning news conference House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said the Republican leadership hadn't scheduled the proposal for a House floor vote.
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