US Republicans float short-term spending plan

Eric Cantor ©AFP/Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama’s Republican foes in the US Congress challenged Democrats Friday to embrace a short-term spending bill they said was designed to avert a looming government shutdown.

“Let me be clear. A government shutdown is not an acceptable or responsible option for Republicans,” the number-two House of Representatives Republican, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, told reporters on a conference call.

The US government could suffer a partial shutdown unless polarized lawmakers in the Senate and House of Representatives agree on a compromise to replace a current stopgap spending measure that expires at midnight March 4.

Cantor said the new Republican-drafted “continuing resolution” would fund the government to March 19 and cut some $4 billion in government spending while all sides pursue negotiations on a broader accord.

“If they walk away from this offer, they’re then actively engineering a government shutdown,” Republican Representative Peter Roskam, one of the party’s senior vote-counters, said on the same conference call.

Details of the plan were to be available later in the day, and Senate Democrats did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But the Washington Post reported Senate Democrats were drafting a seven-month spending measure that would accelerate some $33 billion in spending cuts and program terminations included in Obama’s proposed budget for next year as part of an effort to rein in Washington.

All sides have said that they want to avoid a government shutdown and sought to pin the blame on their political foes for such an outcome if it occurs and disrupts many services and idles hundreds of thousands of government employees.

Then-president Bill Clinton successfully pinned the blame on Republicans for a 21-day shutdown in 1995-1996 and coasted to reelection in November 1996 while portraying his political foes as radicals.