Congressional leaders and President Barack Obama met Wednesday night to negotiate further on a spending bill that would keep the federal government in funds for the remainder of the federal fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, but failed to reach agreement.

Unless Congress and the White House can broach a compromise, the federal government faces the likelihood of shutting down once the current temporary spending bill--called a continuing resolution--expires on midnight of April 8.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer announced the meeting via Twitter late afternoon on April 6. Earlier in the day, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) criticized Obama, telling reporters that "the president, he didn't lead on last year's budget. And clearly, he's not leading on this year's budget." Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) both attended the April 6 night meeting.

The White House also geared up its campaign to warn of the consequences of a government shutdown, making available a "senior administration official" during an April 6 telephone press call. About 800,000 federal employees would be prevented from reporting to work during a shutdown, the official said. Federal law prohibits civil servants from volunteering their work.

The Internal Revenue Service would continue to accept electronically filed taxes and make electronic refund payments, the official said, but other Internet-based transactions could cease to function unless they fall under the excepted category of activities permissible under a shutdown, generally those relating to the protection of human life or property.

The official also gave voice to an administration talking point, that "politics" are what's preventing the emergence of a budget compromise. The Republican House position has been that $61 billion should be cut from fiscal 2010 levels, while Democrats have said they're willing to accept $33 billion in cuts, plus no GOP legislative riders such as ones limiting the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases or preventing organizations that provide abortions from receiving federal funds.   

"The president believes that we need to put the politics aside, and that it's time for Washington to work through the remaining differences," the official said.

House Republicans, meanwhile, have scheduled for an April 7 vote a new week-long continuing resolution that would fund the Defense Department for the rest of the fiscal year but the rest of the government only through April 15. The bill would make $12 billion in cuts--and Obama and Reid have both publically said they won't accept it. "We can't keep funding the country with one stopgap after another," Reid said April 6.    

The proposed continuing resolution, H.R. 1363, would make appropriations of $17 million for the e-government fund--half the $34 million Congress gave the fund in fiscal 2010, but substantially more than the $2 million House Republicans originally intended to allocated to the fund, which finances efforts such as Data.gov, USASpending.gov and the IT Dashboard.

Some watchdog groups worried that without more than $2 million, many Office of Management and Budget-led transparency websites would have to close down.

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