THE HEADLINES….

• GOP prepares 1-week extension as shutdown looms: Republicans battling with President Barack Obama over budget cuts plan to hold a House vote Thursday on one-week legislation to avoid a government shutdown, despite opposition from the White House and Senate Democrats pressing for a longer-term solution.
  The party leaders debated as the clock ticked toward a midnight Friday deadline. Even a brief shutdown could affect a wide range of Americans, from troops fighting abroad to tourists planning trips to national parks.
  The move by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to advance the interim budget measure angered his Democratic negotiating counterparts and came after slower-than-hoped White House talks Wednesday night. The president said Republicans need to display more urgency, while Boehner said honest differences remain…. – AP, 4-7-11
• Obama Meeting Fails to End Stalemate Over Federal Budget: President Obama and Congressional leaders said Wednesday that a late-night White House bargaining session produced no budget breakthrough that would avert a government shutdown this weekend but agreed the two sides had narrowed the issues in efforts to strike a deal.
  Emerging from a 90-minute meeting with Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Speaker John A. Boehner, the president said aides would work through the night and he and Mr. Reid expressed optimism that a compromise could be reached.
  “I remain confident that if we’re serious about getting something done, we should be able to complete a deal and get it passed and avert a shutdown,” Mr. Obama said. NYT, 4-7-11
• Some progress cited in federal budget talks: Republican House Speaker John Boehner won’t acknowledge compromising with Democrats, but he and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid both cite movement in White House negotiations to avoid a government shutdown…. – LAT, 4-7-11
• Rifts Within Both Parties Test Leaders in Budget Fight: On one level, the budget showdown that continued to play out here on Wednesday is all about the balance of power between the two parties, a question of whether President Obama has regained his footing and can still control the direction of the country or whether Speaker John A. Boehner and the Republicans are now calling the shots.
  But on another, it is a test of each man’s ability to weather challenges inside his own party. The outcome will help determine whether Mr. Boehner is leading his party or following the demands of the Tea Party movement. For Mr. Obama, it is the biggest test yet of whether he can reposition himself as a pragmatic leader who can recapture the political center and keep liberals sufficiently energized to help him win re-election…. – NYT, 4-7-11
• Obama Presses for Budget Issues ‘Narrowed’; Parties Asked to Work Through Night as Shutdown Looms: “What [the talks] did was narrow the issues and clarify the issues that are still outstanding,” Mr. Obama said. He was confident a deal could be reached to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, he said, but “it’s going to require a sufficient sense of urgency from all parties involved.”
  Staffers from the White House and the offices of Messrs. Boehner and Reid were set to work through night, and Mr. Obama said he would check in with them Thursday morning—a day and a half before the deadline—and summon the parties back to the White House if necessary.
  “We’re going to keep pounding away at this thing,” Mr. Obama said…. – WSJ, 4-7-11
• President Obama talks with reporters about the 2011 budget negotiations. He said he should not have to be a referee for Congress: Racing a Friday deadline to avert a government shutdown, President Obama met late Wednesday with top congressional negotiators and said afterward that he is “confident” a spending deal can be finalized in time.
  House Speaker John A. Boehner, the top Republican who met with Mr. Obama, said there is still no agreement on an overall dollar amount for spending cuts, or on what legislative add-ons will be included in any final spending deal. But all sides agreed their staffs would continue working after the high-level White House meeting.
  “What they did was narrow the issues and clarify the issues that are still outstanding,” Mr. Obama told reporters afterward. “I remain confident that if we’re serious about getting something done, we should be able to complete a deal and get it passed and avert a shutdown.”…. – Washington Times, 4-7-11
• In Washington, squabbling over who’s an adult: Suddenly everyone in Washington wants to be an adult. President Barack Obama says he wants to have an adult dialogue on the budget. Republican lawmakers contend they’re the ones trying to have a grown-up talk. Both sides are pointing fingers yet both have agreed to repeated delays in completing a budget to keep the government open for the last six months of the fiscal year.
  The bickering might seem, well, childish, but the stakes are high as each side tries to win public opinion and display the leadership qualities to attract voters at the ballot box through 2012 and beyond…. – AP, 4-7-11
• Administration: Shutdown would furlough 800,000 federal workers: Officials began warning Wednesday of significant cutbacks in government services as the threat of a federal government shutdown lurched one day closer to reality.
  Failure to reach a budget deal would mean furloughing about 800,000 federal employees nationwide — many of whom are expected to surrender their Blackberrys, according to senior administration officials familiar with shutdown planning…. – WaPo, 4-6-11
• White House says shutdown will delay pay to troops: The Obama administration warned Wednesday that a federal shutdown would undermine the economic recovery, delay pay to U.S. troops fighting in three wars, slow the processing of tax returns and limit small business loans and government-backed mortgages during peak home buying season.
  The dire message, delivered two days before the federal government’s spending authority expires, appeared aimed at jolting congressional Republicans into a budget compromise. Billions of dollars apart, congressional negotiators were working to strike a deal by Friday to avert a shutdown by setting spending limits through the end of September. The last such shutdown took place 15 years ago and lasted 21 days…. – AP, 4-6-11

QUOTES

• President Obama on the Ongoing Budget Negotiations: We just had a productive meeting with Speaker Boehner, as well as Majority Leader Reid. We discussed the impasse that we’re currently at with respect to the budget, and I thought the meetings were frank, they were constructive, and what they did was narrow the issues and clarify the issues that are still outstanding.
  I remain confident that if we’re serious about getting something done we should be able to complete a deal and get it passed and avert a shutdown. But it’s going to require a sufficient sense of urgency from all parties involved. It means that people have to recognize that a government shutdown has real consequences for real people.
  There was a interview that was done tonight on one of the nightly news networks — a man from Kentucky named J.T. Henderson. He said he’s counting on his tax rebate because his family has been scraping by, and he might not get it if the government shuts down. So J.T. said if he could speak directly to all of us in Washington he’d tell us that all of this political grandstanding has effects as it trickles down to normal, everyday Americans.
  I could not have said it better myself. A shutdown could have real effects on everyday Americans. That means that small business owners who are counting on that loan to open their business, to make payroll, to expand, suddenly they can’t do it. It means folks who are potentially processing a mortgage, they may not be able to get it. It means that hundreds of thousands of workers across the country suddenly are without a paycheck. Their families are counting on them being able to go to work and do a good job.
  There are ramifications all across this economy. And at a time when the economy is still coming out of an extraordinarily deep recession, it would be inexcusable, given the relatively narrow differences when it comes to numbers between the two parties, that we can’t get this done.
  So my expectation is that folks are going to work through the night. In the morning I will check in with the respective staffs of the Speaker and the Majority Leader, as well as my team here. If we haven’t made progress, we’re going to go back at it again. And we’re going to keep on pounding away at this thing because I’m absolutely convinced that we can get this done.
  There’s no reason why we should not be able to complete a deal. There’s no reason why we should have a government shutdown — unless we’ve made a decision that politics is more important than folks like J.T. Henderson.
  That’s not why we we’re elected. That’s not why we were sent here. And I want to meet the expectations of the American people in terms of delivering for them. – WH, 4-6-11
• Obama: ‘Inexcusable’ not to reach budget deal: Obama’s guests at last night’s budget session — House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada — also expressed hope that a shutdown can be avoided.
  “We had a productive conversation and made good progress toward an agreement,” Reid said. “I am hopeful that we will be able to announce a compromise agreement soon.”
  Boehner, standing beside Reid in the White House driveway, said: “There’s an intent on both sides to continue to work together to try to resolve this … no one wants the government to shut down.”
  In the White House press room last night, Obama said, “I remain confident that if we’re serious about getting something done we should be able to complete a deal and get it passed and avert a shutdown.” “But,” he added, “it’s going to require a sufficient sense of urgency from all parties involved.”… – USA Today, 4-7-11
• John Boehner: ‘No daylight’ between tea party and me: “Listen, there’s no daylight between the tea party and me,” the Ohio Republican said in an interview with ABC News conducted Wednesday. “None,” he said, when questioner George Stephanopoulos pushed back. “What they want is, they want us to cut spending. They want us to deal with this crushing debt that’s going to crush the future for our kids and grandkids. There’s no daylight there.”
  “Listen … my job is to do what I can do in the House,” Boehner said of the proposed one-week funding bill. “And I do believe that … it’s a reasonable chance of keeping the government open and funding our troops— at the critical time when we’ve got troops in two wars overseas.”… “The president— I’ve been begging the president for months, ‘Mr. President, let’s lock arms,'” Boehner said…. – Politico, 4-7-11

HISTORIANS & ANALYSTS’ COMMENTS

• Julian Zelizer: Government shutdown: How it came to this: “This is just an eyeball-to-eyeball moment where Republicans want to exercise their power,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. “And Obama is trying to defend his reputation with Democrats.”… – CNN, 4-6-11
• Steven F. Hayward: The Ryan Express One part FDR, one part Gipper: The liberal reaction to Paul Ryan’s budget plan makes it evident that liberals are more terrified than they’ve been since Jack Kemp (one of Ryan’s mentors) advanced supply-side economics back in the late 1970s. And although Ryan may not run for president next year, it is clear that just as Ronald Reagan had to embrace the Kemp-Roth tax-cut plan in his 1980 campaign, the eventual GOP nominee will have to embrace Ryan’s budget plan if he or she is going to be taken seriously by the party, and especially the Tea Party.
  As Kemp’s understanding of supply-side economics was about more than just tax rates and revenues, Ryan’s budget architecture is about much more than just fiscal balances, and this is what terrifies liberals the most. The most interesting twist on the whole matter, though, is whether Ryan’s plan would eviscerate the welfare state (cue Nancy Pelosi, et al.), or rescue it within reasonable limits… – National Review, 4-6-11
• DANIEL HENNINGER: A Ronald Reagan Budget Paul Ryan’s budget offers much more than deficit-reduction brimstone: Nothing like Paul Ryan’s budget, “The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America’s Promise,” has been heard from a Republican since February 1981, when Ronald Reagan issued his presidency’s first budget message, “America’s New Beginning: A Program for Economic Recovery.” The echoes reach beyond the titles.
  Both budgets announced a clear break with the Washington status quo. Reagan reversed the policies of the Carter presidency and the infamous stagflation years of weak economic growth, 18% interest rates and 14% inflation. Reagan’s 1981 message posited four reversals: “a substantial reduction” in spending; “a significant reduction in federal tax rates”; relief from federal regulation; and “a monetary policy consistent with those policies.”… – WSJ, 4-7-11