Barack Obama, Government Shutdown | featured news

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

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.”

Obama senior adviser David Plouffe accuses 30 Tea Party members in Congress of controlling the debate — whether over deficit reduction, taxes or more immediate items like funding for the government and disaster relief — both set to run out this week.'Fox News Sunday' Transcript: Plouffe Defends Obama's Deficit-Reduction PlanFull Coverage:

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner broke off talks with President Barack Obama on Friday and said he will begin negotiations with Senate leaders aimed at meeting an August 2 deadline to avert an unprecedented U.S. debt default.

With a partial government shutdown just minutes away, President Obama and congressional leaders reached a tentative deal Friday night to cut ...

With a midnight deadline looming, the White House and Congress scrambled on Friday to break a budget impasse that threatens to shut down the U.S. government and idle hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

Struggling to avert a government shutdown, Republicans and Democrats each said Wednesday the other would be to blame if compromise talks on the budget fail to produce an agreement.

Congress and the White House veered toward a fiscal collision on Tuesday as the Obama administration rejected a short-term House Republican demand to cut $12 billion now in exchange for keeping the government open for one more week. At the same time, the Republicans’ budget chairman set forth a longer-range blueprint defining a new era of profoundly smaller government and steep tax cuts for corporations and individuals.