Government Shutdown, Lawmaker | featured news

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.

The legislation will finance the government for the first four days of October, until lawmakers return and can vote on a more ambitious seven-week spending bill.

British and Japanese officials warned Sunday of disastrous consequences for the global economy if last-minute talks among lawmakers in Washington failed to agree on raising the U.S. borrowing limit and averting a debt default.

Top Republican lawmakers and the Obama administration’s budget director both predicted Sunday that an agreement would be reached before the federal government defaults on its debt in early August, but both sides continued to squabble over the details of competing proposals, offering little evidence that a deal was at hand.