Harry Reid: Let's Not Wait Until the Last Minute to Avoid a Shutdown

Come to the negotiating table and let’s avoid a self-inflicted disaster.

That is the message Democrats have been delivering to their Republican counterparts for months, and it is a message the party’s Senate leader reiterated on Tuesday.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a New York Times op-ed the Republican-led Congress narrowly avoided shutting down the Homeland Security Department, successfully shut down the Export-Import Bank by letting its charter expire and is headed for a full government shutdown Oct. 1.

“Republicans now are abusing the funding process to manufacture one of the biggest crises of the past few years, with conservatives demanding that ideological and special-interest riders be added to must-pass funding bills,” Reid wrote.

He said Democrats’ public and private calls for a deal to bridge the massive divide between Republican spending levels and Democratic priorities have been “met with nothing but silence.”

“Congress has just begun its August recess, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use this time productively and open budget negotiations,” Reid wrote. “I say to my Republican colleagues, let’s get started -- there is no good reason to wait until the last minute.”

A last-minute deal, however, already appears inevitable. The House passed several appropriations bills before a dispute over how to address the display of Confederate flags on federal property halted the progress. The Senate has yet to pass any of the 12 required funding measures. There are precious few legislative days currently scheduled to resume that process before agency funding expires Oct 1., and President Obama has already threatened to veto all of the House-backed bills anyway.

Democrats instead want to piece together a bipartisan budget compromise similar to the one crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., in 2013. That agreement staved off sequestration-level funding caps for fiscal years 2014 and 2015 by finding alternative ways to cut spending, including requiring new federal employees to contribute more of their paychecks toward their pensions.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, also said it was time to find a passable budget solution that would stave off a shutdown. He pointed to a Congressional Budget Office report released Tuesday that found up to 1.4 million jobs would be created if spending levels were restored to their pre-sequestration caps. 

“These arbitrary sequestration caps have never made any sense, and now we see even more clearly the implications for our workers,” Sanders said. “We must end sequestration now ahead of the end of the fiscal year and prevent a budget showdown that will help nobody. It makes no sense to head towards a crisis when we have a clear path towards a better solution.”

Obama has said he would veto any appropriations measure that retains the spending levels put in place by the 2011 Budget Control Act. With no apparent progress toward reaching a solution or even kicking off the negotiating process, it has become increasingly likely a stopgap-spending bill that keeps agencies funded at their fiscal 2015 levels will be required. Reid’s counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has repeatedly said there will not be a shutdown at the end of the fiscal year.

Reid said there is bipartisan agreement that sequestration is bad policy, pointing to previous comments made by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

“It is time for Republicans to come to the table, forge a fair budget deal and spare the American people yet another unnecessary, manufactured crisis,” Reid said.