Tagged: federal budget

Reporting from WBEZ's Tony Arnold used in this report.

Illinois' two U.S. senators are saying party leaders are trying to avoid a government shut down. Lawmakers are facing a Friday deadline to finalize the federal budget.

Illinois' senior U.S. senator, Democrat Dick Durbin, said budget negotiations with House Republicans and Speaker John Boehner are close to wrapping up.

Though he says a government shutdown would be "tragic," Missouri Democrat William Lacy Clay says he doesn't expect Republicans and Democrats to be able to reach an agreement on a budget for this year before a temporary spending plan expires next Friday.

The extension is the sixth since the federal budget expired in September 2010. And Clay says the U.S. House is in "total disarray," with Congressional Republicans choosing to advance policies simply to hurt the Obama administration.

U.S. Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri is blaming the current federal budget deadlock on the last Congress.

The Senate on Wednesday rejected a budget proposal approved by the Republican-controlled House, as well as an alternative favored by Democrats. Blunt, a Republican from Springfield, says the new Congress did not create this environment; the previous one, controlled by Democrats, did.