Obama: 'I expect an answer' Friday a.m.

WASHINGTON, April 7 (UPI) -- President Barack Obama said negotiators made progress Thursday on a budget bill but he would not "express wild optimism" a government shutdown can be avoided.

Speaking at the White House following the latest in a series of negotiations between White House and congressional officials, the president said "differences have been narrowed" and the talks "made some additional progress" but "difficult issues that are important to both sides" remain.

"I'm not prepared to express wild optimism but we are further along than were yesterday," Obama said.

He reiterated his concern that a shutdown of the federal government would throw 800,000 people out of work and cited a comment by an economist whose name he did not mention that economic damage from a shutdown would mount quickly and a prolonged shutdown could threaten a "renewed recession."

"Because the machinery of the shutdown is necessarily starting to move I expect an answer in the morning," he said. "My hope is that I'll be able to announce to the American people sometime relatively early in the day that a shutdown has been avoided."

As Obama met with Vice President Joe Biden, Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., members of Congress were advised to keep their weekend schedules flexible. Following an afternoon meeting at the Oval Office, Boehner and Reid said discussions were polite, but a deal still hasn't been reached to keep government operating after midnight Friday, when a stopgap funding measure expires.

While leaders were at the White House Thursday, the Republican House approved, on a 247-181 vote, a plan that would keep the government open until April 15, include another $12 billion in spending cuts and fully fund the Pentagon through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Obama said he would veto the bill, calling it a "distraction" to the budget negotiations.

CNN reported furlough notices have been sent to congressional staffs. The Defense Department sent a message to Pentagon workers outlining its plans should a shutdown occur.

"We are committed to getting our fiscal house in order and to keeping our government functioning," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said on the House floor Thursday.

Republicans and Democrats tried to stake their positions as the shutdown clock ticked away.

"There is no agreement on a number -- I think we were closer to a number last night than this morning," Boehner said earlier Thursday. "There are a number of issues on the table," including riders on several social issues.

"I thought we made some progress last night," Boehner said. "But I see what the White House has to offer today, it's really just more of the same."

In his own news conference, Reid said Democrats "bent and bent and bent" to reach agreement with Republicans, but to no avail.

"We don't have time to fight over the Tea Party's extreme social agenda," Reid said.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., citing expert economists, said the still-fragile economic recovery would be undermined by a shutdown.

Boehner, Durbin said, "has to tell the Tea Party roughriders to put their horses back in the barn" and save their policy battles "for another day."

"If we are serious about getting something done, we should be able to complete a deal and get it passed and avert a shutdown," Obama said Wednesday. "But it's going to require a sufficient sense of urgency from all parties involved."

Failure to reach a compromise would be "inexcusable."

If a budget compromise is reached, a temporary measure could be passed to provide a grace period that would keep agencies operating until a full budget for the remainder of this fiscal year could be considered next week.