ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 18, 1995 TAG: 9512180110
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: The Washington Post
White House and Republican budget negotiators impatiently circled one another but reached no agreements Sunday, allowing the full force of the year's second government shutdown to take effect today.
Disruptions caused by the shutdown, which began at midnight Friday when short-term funding expired, will expand today. Nine Cabinet departments and agencies that remain without funding are to begin sending about 260,000 federal workers home.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers and White House officials met in small gatherings and large. They grouped and regrouped in sessions aimed at finding a budget compromise outside the regular budget negotiations that broke off Friday in a hail of political sound bites and one-liners.
White House chief of staff Leon Panetta said Democrats planned to offer a new proposal this week to break the stalemate with the Republicans. ``This is a new offer that basically protects our priorities and balances the budget,'' he said.
Administration officials met Sunday, mostly with groups of Democrats but also with a bipartisan group of senators - who also met with Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M. - in search of a formula that might get enough votes from Democrats and centrist-to-moderate Republicans to force a break in the impasse. No break was apparent Sunday when the sessions ended.
Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., said on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' that time was running out for a full budget agreement, and the result may be sharply reduced interim funding that would delay the resolution of the major disagreements between the White House and congressional Republicans over taxes, spending for programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, and welfare restructuring.
``If we don't have it by next Friday, it probably won't happen,'' he said of a compromise on the balanced budget. In that case, he said, Republicans will approve legislation to restrict federal spending so sharply that Clinton ``will wish he had a budget agreement.''
``I just hope that we can reopen the government tomorrow and then resume these talks in good faith,'' President Clinton said Sunday. He said he had ``made far, far more movement than they have.''
Panetta said Clinton is likely to call Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., today to ask them again for a short-term spending bill to fund the nine departments - Interior, Health and Human Services, Commerce, Education, Justice, Labor, State, Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs - whose annual appropriations bills have not been enacted for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB