With a government shutdown less than 10 hours away, it has come to this: Top Democrats and Republicans both said Friday that key disagreements are holding up a deal on the budget.
But they can't even agree on how they disagree.
In the early afternoon, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters that negotiations with Democrats were focused mainly on the overall size of budget cuts.
"Most of the policy issues have been dealt with," Boehner said, apparently meaning the disputes over "riders" that would strip out funding from programs unpopular with conservatives. "And the big fight is over the spending."
But, later, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) detailed a very different account of the spending negotiations. Expanding on remarks from Friday morning, Reid said that the two sides had actually agreed on a specific amount of cuts — but that deal was torpedoed by Republican demands to cut funding for the group Planned Parenthood.
"At 4 a.m., I got an e-mail saying, 'We've tried, but they've backed off the number they agreed to,' " Reid said, because of the Planned Parenthood dispute.
Republicans have said all day that they never agreed to a specific number.
Planned Parenthood provides abortions, but is not permitted to use federal money to pay for them. Instead, it receives federal funds for other women's health services, including screenings for breast and cervical cancer, HIV testing, treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and checks for high blood pressure and cholesterol.
Republicans, who say federal funding for those services frees up more private funds for abortions, offered to replace federal funding for women's health programs with block grants to individual states. Congressional aides said Reid and President Obama objected to this proposal because they believed it would allow Republican governors to deny public money not only to Planned Parenthood, but also to other women's health groups.
"The House leadership, with the speaker, have a very clear choice to make. And they don't have much time to make that choice," Reid said after a meeting with Senate Democrats. "They can keep their word, and significantly cut the federal deficit, or they can shut down the American government over women's access to health care. If that sounds ridiculous, that's because it is ridiculous."
Reid said he was already talking with Republican leaders to prepare to rush a spending deal through the often-balky Senate.
But, he said, if a deal was not reached soon, the day was headed for a chaotic ending. Both sides have proposed one-week spending extensions, but with different provisions attached. Reid said that, if it came to that, Congress would be left to a last-minute debate over which to choose.
Reid also said that, during late-night talks at the White House Thursday, Vice President Biden had seemed to lose his composure over the Republicans' insistence on defunding Planned Parenthood.
"Joe Biden wasn't flustered," Reid said, when a reporter described Biden that way. "But he was damn mad."
Even as the two sides traded allegations, there were still small signs of hope.
The Senate's top Republican, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), said on the Senate floor that neither side wanted a shutdown and that he believed "a resolution is within reach."
"I believe there will be an agreement here shortly. I've been in many negotiations over the years. I assure you, these are not unresolvable issues," McConnell said. "So my suggestion . . . is that both sides sit back and give the negotiators a few more hours to work this out."
After a meeting with House Republicans in early afternoon, Boehner told reporters that one key stumbling block-- the amount of money to allocate to the Department of Defense — was "pretty much resolved." But he said nothing about the Planned Parenthood issue.
According to Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a close Boehner ally, the speaker told members he hoped a deal could be reached by the evening.
"He said he was hopeful that he could come back in a couple of hours and bring us back together and have a deal," McKeon told reporters.
The two sides are fighting over a relatively small piece of the $1 trillion-plus federal budget. Reid has said that negotiators were near an agreement to cut $38 billion from current spending levels — $5 billion more in cuts than they had discussed last week.
But, if they cannot forge a pact by midnight, the entire government will run out of money and shut down.
Federal agencies have begun preparing more than 800,000 federal workers nationwide for a possible closure, letting them know whether they should show up for work on Monday morning if the government runs out of funds.
The White House said Obama spoke in separate phone calls to Boehner and Reid on Friday. The two-sentence statement did not say how the administration viewed the progress of the talks, adding only that "discussions between the two leaders and the White House aimed at reaching a budget agreement are continuing."
Obama remained out out of public view, huddling with advisers.
Planned Parenthood is the nation's largest abortion provider. The organization receives millions of federal dollars for non-abortion services for low-income people, including breast exams and Pap smears, cholesterol and blood pressure screenings, family planning and contraceptives.
But conservatives have questioned the integrity of the group, and argued that — even if federal funding doesn't pay for abortions — it frees up other money that could.
In lieu of a provision defunding Planned Parenthood, Republicans this week proposed an alternative that would change the way federal Title X funding for women's health programs is distributed, according to senior congressional aides.
Currently, Title X funding is provided in federal grants to women's health organizations, including Planned Parenthood. Under the Republicans' alternative proposal, federal Title X funds would be sent to states in the form of block grants and it would be up to state governments to distribute those funds to health groups.
A senior Republican aide dismissed Reid's criticism of this idea as empty "sound and fury," saying that rather than denying women's health funding, Republicans wanted to allow states to distribute the money as they see fit.
With the impasse unresolved, Boehner urged the Senate and Obama to approve a one-week budget extension that passed the GOP-controlled House on Thursday. It includes full funding for the Defense Department as well as $12 billion in cuts to other agencies.
But the measure has no chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate, in part because it contains a restriction on funding for abortions in the District. Obama has said he would veto the legislation.
Reid said he would propose his own measure to fund the government for one week more. That proposal, Democratic leaders said, would include $2 billion in overall spending cuts, and fund the U.S. military for the remainder of the fiscal year.
If Senate Republicans filibuster Reid's bill, and the government shuts down, Democrats will be able to blame the GOP.
The fight appears to have come down to a test of political will between Boehner on one side and Reid and Obama on the other. Neither side wants to be perceived as the one who caves. And both see an advantage in waiting until the last minute to strike an agreement.
But what if the two sides miscalculate, and a shutdown comes?
Both lawmakers and the White House could be tarred with an even more damaging perception: These are the people who couldn't manage to keep the government open.
Democrats and Republicans are both eager to move past this argument and get to other disagreements with far greater impact, including debates over whether to allow the U.S. Treasury to borrow money beyond the current $14.3 trillion debt limit and over the GOP's ambitious proposed budget for 2012.
Congressional leaders consider the current talks a dry run for the battles to come.
"Understand that this process that we're in is likely to be repeated a number of times this year," Boehner told reporters Thursday. "I think everyone is taking their time, trying to get this right."
Staff writers Perry Bacon Jr. and Felicia Sonmez contributed to this report.
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