Boehner: Budget Negotiations Have Not Yet Yielded A Deal

By Mario Trujillo

After what looked like a breakthrough on negotiations regarding government spending levels for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) said there is still no agreement on how much to cut.

“You have heard a lot of talk over the last 24 hours,” Boehner told reporters Thursday morning. “There is no agreement on numbers. Nothing will be agreed to until everything is agreed to.”

Last night, Vice President Biden said that both sides had basically settled on a cut of $33 billion from current spending levels — the equivalent of a $73 billion reduction from the president’s proposed 2011 budget, which was not adopted.

“There is no reason why, with all that’s going on in the world and with the state of the economy, we can’t reach an agreement to avoid a government shutdown, because the bottom line here is we’re working off the same number,” Biden told reporters Wednesday night. “This is — it’s about how.”

Biden, like Boehner, also noted there is no deal until there is a whole deal. The potential agreement is substantially less than the $100 billion in cuts from the President’s proposed budget that the House voted on 40 days ago and more than $20 billion more cuts than have already been agreed to on short-term spending resolutions. 

Boehner said he hasn’t had contact with Biden since the vice president made his statements. 

The deadline for a government shutdown is April 8. Both Houses have already passed two extensions this year to short-term spending resolutions.

With just over a week until a shutdown, Boehner said he is “not very interested” in creating a bipartisan coalition mirroring the one formed in the final days of the tax compromise in December that extended a number of Bush-era tax cuts and unemployment benefits.

As members of the Tea Party Caucus push the original House spending bill, a rally on the National Mall is scheduled today urging Republicans to hold strong.

“I’m well aware of a lot of people in Washington who want us to do a lot of different things,” Boehner said. “We promised the American People that we would fight to cut spending and that is what we’re doing.”

Boehner said he wouldn’t discuss negotiations regarding policy riders within the spending bill with reporters. Biden said the addition of policy riders is a non-starter.

Boehner continued to levy the criticism that Senate Democrats have not come up with a counter proposal of their own to bring to the negotiating table. He also said he hopes to finish soon so the Congress can get on to the 2012 budget, which will likely include reforms to entitlement programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.