Eleventh-hour bid to avert shutdown of US Govt

Party leaders on Capitol Hill are racing to overcome an impasse in budget talks that is threatening a partial shutdown of the United States Government.

If no solution is found, hundreds of thousands of federal workers will become idle and facilities as varied as zoos, museums and passport offices will close temporarily.

After President Barack Obama told negotiators to "act like grown-ups" and get over their differences, hopes of a solution were still flickering.

Obama said after a hastily arranged late-evening White House meeting with Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that he remains confident a shutdown can be avoided. The three met for an hour and 15 minutes.

If they fail to set spending levels for the remainder of the financial year, which ends on September 30, the shutdown will begin tomorrow.

The last such shutdown came in 1996, when President Bill Clinton was in the White House. It lasted three weeks and brought public wrath on then Republican House Speaker, Newt Gingrich.

Centre-stage this time is Boehner, who became Speaker after Republicans retook control of the House in last year's mid-term elections. Boehner is under pressure from his newly elected Tea Party caucus to win cuts not just in spending but in the size of government itself.

After hopes that a compromise would be reached involving cuts of US$33 billion ($42.5 billion) this year, Boehner dismayed Democrats by suggesting he wanted to strip out another US$7 billion.

"Every time we agree to meet in the middle they move where the middle is," Reid complained yesterday. "It's time to get the job done."

Officials in Washington were already scrambling to prepare for a possible shutdown which, if protracted, could endanger the fragile economic recovery.

Non-essential government staff would be asked to stay at home. Workers expecting to take paid leave would no longer be able to. It would be illegal for federal workers to use government-issued BlackBerry devices. National parks such as Yellowstone and the Statue of Liberty would be closed. Essential services, such as defence, air traffic control and the FBI, would not be affected but there is concern unemployment benefit payments could be interrupted.

Even if a last-minute deal is reached the fight between the parties over levels of government spending will be far from over. Polls show that most Americans

- INDEPENDENT, AP