Senate seeks budget answer

The closed-door Republican session came as the shutdown began its 12th day. Saturday also marked just five days from when administration officials have warned the government will deplete its ability to borrow money and risk a first-time federal default that could jolt the world economy. Conservatives said Obama was to blame for the standoff.

“Perhaps he sees this as the best opportunity for him to win the House in 2014,” said Rep. John Fleming, R-La. “It’s very clear to us he does not now, and never had, any intentions of negotiating.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s not supposed to be this way,” President Barack Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. “Manufacturing crises to extract massive concessions isn’t how our democracy works, and we have to stop it. Politics is a battle of ideas, but you advance those ideas through elections and legislation — not extortion.”

Across the Capitol, senators planned to vote Saturday on a Democratic measure to lift the government’s borrowing cap through the end of next year. Republicans were poised to reject it.

But more importantly, a bipartisan group of senators, closely watched by Senate leaders, is polishing a plan aimed at reaching compromise with Obama.

An emerging proposal by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and others would pair a six-month plan to keep the government open with an increase in the government’s borrowing limit through January.

Obama has turned away a House plan to link the reopening of the government — and a companion measure to temporarily increase the government’s borrowing cap — to concessions on the budget.

In the face of disastrous opinion polls, GOP leaders have signaled they will make sure the debt limit is increased with minimal damage to the financial markets. But they’re still seeking concessions as a condition for reopening the government.

Obama met Senate Republicans on Friday and heard a pitch from Collins on raising the debt limit until the end of January, reopening the government and cutting the health care law at its periphery.

The plan also would strengthen income verification for people receiving subsidies through the health care law and set up a broader set of budget talks.

The Collins proposal would delay for two years a medical-device tax that helps finance the health care law, and it would subject millions of individuals eligible for subsidies to purchase health insurance under the program to stronger income verification.

Collins said Obama said the proposal “was constructive, but I don’t want to give the impression that he endorsed it.”

Associated Press writers Alan Fram and David Espo contributed to this report.

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