White House meeting fails to end budget standoff

House Speaker John Boehner emerged from a meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House Wednesday evening and told reporters little progress has been made in ending the standoff that has idled hundreds of thousands of federal workers and curbed federal services around the country.

Funding for much of the government was cut off Tuesday after a Republican effort to thwart the health care law stalled the short-term, normally routine spending bill.

Obama "refuses to negotiate," Boehner said after talks that lasted more than an hour. "All we're asking for here is a discussion and fairness for the American people under Obamacare."

Obama and congressional leaders met at the White House on the second day of a partial government shutdown. Boehner said it was a "nice conversation."

Boehner told reporters House Republicans have sent four proposals for funding the government to the Senate, but they've all been rejected. He says the Senate should appoint conferees to work out differences between a House and Senate proposals.

Obama and Senate Democrats have rejected the House-passed proposals, because they all make major changes to Obama's health care law, better known as Obamacare.

After the meeting, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said, "We're locked in tight on Obamacare" and neither the president nor Democrats in Congress will accept changes in that health care law as the price for spending legislation needed to reopen the government.

Reid said Republicans have tried to block new government programs in the past — programs that have, in each case, proven to be popular.

Reid said Republicans "did the same thing to Social Security. They did the same thing Medicare, and they are trying to do the same thing to Obamacare."

With the nation's ability to borrow money soon to lapse, Republicans and Democrats alike said the shutdown that has furloughed an estimated 800,000 federal workers could last for two weeks or more, obliging a divided government to grapple with both issues at the same time.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Republicans needed to take the debt ceiling debate off the table, stressing the importance of the United States honoring its debts. She added that Obama will not invoke a clause in the 14th amendment of the Constitution as a way to lift the U.S. debt ceiling on his own.

The United States will run out of cash to pay its bills by Oct. 17 if the debt ceiling is not raised.

An attempt by Democrats to force a "clean CR" — shutdown-ending legislation that does not include Republican changes to Obamacare — to the House floor, over the objections of Speaker Boehner, with a two-thirds majority vote failed on a 227-197 vote, with all Republicans in opposition.

The GOP, in turn, moved to pass piecemeal funding for select parts of the government — National Parks, the National Institutes of Health and Washington D.C. operations. After similar moves failed on Tuesday, House Republicans passed the three budget measures Wednesday by simple majority votes — an approach without majority support in the Senate.

Democrats were scathing in their criticism.

"The American people would get better government out of Monkey Island at the local zoo than we're giving them today," said Rep. John Dingell of Michigan.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press