Government Shutdown | featured news

The likely deadline for Congress to prevent the government's first default will be later than earlier thought, a Washington think tank has found. The Bipartisan Policy Center said Friday that the government probably won't reach the brink of default until early September or early October. It had previously said default would come in July or August.

President Obama signed a spending bill Tuesday that headed off a government shutdown.

The Senate approved legislation Wednesday to lock in $85 billion in widely decried spending cuts aimed at restraining soaring federal deficits — and to avoid a government shutdown just a week away. President Barack Obama's fellow Democrats rejected a call to reopen White House tours scrapped because of the tightened spending.

The House has approved legislation to prevent a government shutdown at the end of the month and give the Pentagon some relief from a cash crunch that's harming military readiness.

The House is taking its first step Wednesday to avoid a government shutdown, as Washington looks to forgo forcing a fiscal crisis this month and instead turns its attention to a more deliberate debate over long-term deficit reduction.

After their fifth budget battle in the past two years and after the sequester cuts went into effect on Friday, both sides seemed to wave the white flag and declare a political truce -- for now. President Obama, during his press conference on Friday, suggested little appetite for a showdown over government operations, which will expire later this month. “If the bill that arrives on my desk is reflective of the commitments that we’ve previously made, then obviously I would sign it because I want to make sure that we keep on doing what we need to do for the American people.”

Congressional negotiators reached agreement Thursday on a compromise spending bill to avert a weekend federal shutdown. They also worked toward a deal renewing the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits for another year but prepared a shorter version as a fallback in case talks fell short.

Democrats backed away from their demand for higher taxes on millionaires as part of legislation to extend Social Security tax cuts for most Americans on Wednesday as Congress struggled to clear critical year-end bills without triggering a partial government shutdown.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers are locked in an end-of-year fight that threatens a government shutdown, an effective tax hike for 160 million Americans and the loss of benefits for millions of unemployed.

This is what a smaller government will look like: There will be less money for local cops, but more money for FBI agents. Less to repair public-housing complexes. More to feed hungry children. There will be less to fix polluted rivers. But more to fix crowded prisons.