U.S. 12 days away from shutdown

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- With the federal government 12 days away from shutting down, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin Sunday accused House Republicans of going too far in making cuts.

In an appearance Sunday alongside Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on NBC's "Meet the Press," Durbin, D-Ill., the Senate majority whip, said the budget cannot be balanced with 15 million people out of work.

At 4:40 a.m. Saturday, the Republican-dominated House advanced a bill that cuts $61 billion in spending from Democratic President Barack Obama's proposal, which is all but certain to be rejected by the Democrat-controlled Senate and the president, The Washington Post reported.

On CBS's "Face the Nation," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, called the GOP budget proposal reckless and said it would result in the loss of 800,000 jobs.

"The bipartisan commission on fiscal responsibility specifically warned against deep, immediate cuts in the year 2011. Why? Because it would hurt a fragile economy and put people out of work," Van Hollen said. "In fact, there are estimates that about 800,000 Americans would lose their jobs if you do this in a reckless manner."

"If I have anything to fault with the House approach to it, I think they went too far in their cuts," Durbin said.

"The president's budget this year is the highest level of spending as a nation -- 25.3 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) -- since World War II," Graham said. "So that's not the number to use to get this place in, in, in fiscal sanity. We should be looking at the dollars we're actually spending. That's what the House did."

"Look, we're not looking for a government shutdown," said Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Budget Committee. "But at the same time, we're also not looking at rubber stamping these really high elevated spending levels that Congress blew through the joint two years ago."

The Senate is in recess next week and the deadline for federal spending is March 4.

Among the cuts in the Republican revisions is a $600 million slice from border security and immigration programs and an end to funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Post said.

The country is facing a $1.5 trillion deficit and Obama said when releasing his budget he wanted to curtail spending, while Republicans are fighting to cut much further.

The United States is already operating under stop-gap budgetary laws as Obama's last budget was never formally adopted.

Should a shutdown occur, tens of thousands of federal employees would be put on furlough until a budget is passed. The last time that happened was under President Bill Clinton for five days in November 1995.