Obama says, "We Have Agreed to $73b Cut", Posted by Meosha Eaton

By Williams Ekanem for MACTV News

As fear of a government shut down looms in Washington D.C., President Barack Obama says the White House and Democrats have agreed to a $73billion cut originally proposed by Speaker Boehner.
Addressing White House Correspondents on the outcome of the meeting between Republican and Democratic leadership at the White House, Obama pointed out that, “the only question is whether politics or ideology are going to get in the way of preventing a government shutdown.”

Giving details of the tripartite meeting, Obama said, “Speaker Boehner, Chairman Rogers, the Republican appropriations chairman -- their original budget proposed $73 billion in cuts. We have now agreed to $73 billion worth of cuts. What they are now saying is, well, we’re not sure that every single one of the cuts that you’ve made are ones that we agree to; we’d rather have these cuts rather than that cut. That’s not the basis for shutting down the government.

We should be able to come up with a compromise in which nobody gets 100 percent of what they want, but the American people get the peace of mind in knowing that folks here in Washington are actually thinking about them -- because they’re going through a whole lot of struggles right now.”
Responding to question of another short term budget, the President responded this way, “We did it once for two weeks, then we did another one for three weeks.

That is not a way to run a government. I can’t have our agencies making plans based on two-week budgets. I can’t have the Defense Department, I can’t have the State Department, I can’t have our various agencies on food safety and making sure our water is clean and making sure that our airports are functioning, I can’t have them making decisions based on two-week-at-a-time budgets.”

On the implication of all these on the American people, the President stated that at a time when the economy is just beginning to grow, where we’re just starting to see a pickup in employment, the last thing we need is a disruption that’s caused by a government shutdown. Not to mention all the people who depend on government services, whether you’re a veteran or you’re somebody who’s trying to get a passport or you’re planning to visit one of the national monuments or you’re a business leader who’s trying to get a small business loan. You don’t want delays, you don’t want disruptions just because of usual politics in Washington.

Pointing out that he is not ready to blame anyone in case of a government shut down, Obama said thw white House is ready to reconvene the meeting until a solution is arrived at.

According to him, “t right now we’ve got some business in front of us that needs to be done, and that is making sure that we are cutting spending in a significant way, but we’re doing it with a scalpel instead of a machete to make sure that we can still make investments in education; we can still make investments in infrastructure; we can still make investments what put the American people back to work and build our economy for the long term.”

Republicans meet with Biden amid budget pressure, Posted by Meosha Eaton

* Biden touts "good meeting," expects more "conversation"
* Bond fund manager PIMCO chief: go slow on budget cuts
* Rank-and-file Republicans reluctant to compromise
* Poll shows public worried about level of Republican cuts
(New throughout with PIMCO, Sperling, meeting held)

By Richard Cowan and Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON, March 3 (Reuters) - Vice President Joe Biden held budget talks with U.S. congressional leaders on Thursday as Republicans came under pressure to scale back their spending-cut plan to slash domestic programs by 25 percent.

President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats are at odds with Republicans over how to shrink the budget deficit, which is due to reach a record $1.65 trillion this year, and keep the federal government running through September.
A temporary funding bill expires on March 18.

"We had a good meeting, and the conversation will continue," Biden said in a statement after the closed-door, one-hour talk on Capitol Hill with top Republican and Democratic leaders. Republicans propose cutting spending by $61 billion through September. But Obama, many Americans and a financial titan highly respected on Wall Street say that is too much.

Biden, who helped negotiate a tax-cut deal with Congress in December, met party leaders from the Senate and House of Representatives on Capitol Hill, including Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The Obama administration is offering $6 billion in cuts from current levels. "We are willing to cut spending further if we can find common ground," White House National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling said. Republicans, spurred on by Tea Party fiscal conservatives, showed little willingness to soften their proposals.

"I don't think compromise right now is the option," said Representative Scott DesJarlais, one of the 85 first-term House Republicans elected last fall on the strength of a conservative groundswell. "We were sent here to cut spending." A top official at the world's biggest bond fund manager called for measured austerity measures to avoid harming the economy.

"Let's cut the deficit, but let's do it gradually," Bill Gross, PIMCO's co-chief investment officer, told Reuters Insider. PIMCO is the world's biggest bond fund manager. Congress avoided a government shutdown by approving a short-term spending bill this week but major disagreements remain. Both parties acknowledge the need this year to cut the deficit, projected to equal 10.9 percent of the economy.

But Democrats argue that reducing government spending too much would hurt the shaky economic recovery and result in hundreds of thousands of job losses at a time when unemployment stands at 9 percent. Democrats who control the Senate are preparing a measure that would keep funding essentially flat.

BALANCE FOR BOEHNER
Many political observers said Boehner won the initial round of the budget debate when lawmakers agreed on Wednesday to a two-week budget extension that included $4 billion in relatively noncontroversial cuts. But even as he harnesses the budget-cutting enthusiasm of the conservative Tea Party activists, he risks alienating the broader public. A poll released on Thursday found that most Americans do not share the passion for deep spending cuts.

The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that more than half of those surveyed fear that Republicans would cut spending too deeply, while 70 percent of Tea Party backers worry they would not go far enough. The Obama administration says that beyond the $6 billion in cuts from current levels it is also proposing reductions totaling $44.8 billion already contained in bills to keep funding the government.

Although Democrats are pitching the $44.8 billion as a spending cut, it is essentially keeping spending flat as the base for comparison is not current spending levels but spending that Obama sought last year in a budget that was never enacted. If lawmakers are unable to reach a deal by March 18, Republicans will put forward another stopgap spending measure that cuts $2 billion per week, House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said.

The White House-led talks may ultimately yield an agreement to cut $25 billion to $35 billion in the current fiscal year, which may prove a tough sell for Boehner with freshman Republicans, said Ethan Siegal of The Washington Exchange, which tracks Washington for institutional investors. "He needs to walk them back from the cliff. He needs to convince them, 'We're going to get more down the road,'" Siegal said.

(Writing by Andy Sullivan; additional reporting by Alister Bull and Jeff Mason)

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