Finding a resolution

Thursday, March 3, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

The Senate on Wednesday passed a bill to fund the federal government for the next two weeks and sent it to President Barack Obama for approval. The president said he would sign the bill, warding off a government shutdown, but the larger problem of passing a long-term budget still looms.

“We cannot keep doing business this way,” Obama said in a statement. “Living with the threat of a shutdown every few weeks is not responsible, and it puts our economic progress in jeopardy.”

He offered to negotiate with leaders in Congress to find a bipartisan plan “free of any party’s social or political agenda.” He said the plan should “cut spending and reduce deficits without damaging economic growth or gutting investments in education, research and development that will create jobs and secure our future.”

That sounds like something everyone in Congress could get behind, but Republican leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate on Wednesday would not say whether they would take the president up on his offer. Instead, they demanded that Senate Democrats either approve their plan, which would cut $61 billion from the current fiscal year ending in September, or offer another proposal that would be acceptable to them.

Republicans are setting a course for another showdown and a potential government shutdown, which would put services people depend upon on hold.

The president is right — this is not the way government should run. But Republicans realize that continuing resolutions — the short-term funding plans Congress uses to keep government operating — give them power. They can push government to the point of shutdown to try to implement their agenda.

Republicans, who have canonized Ronald Reagan, would be wise to remember Reagan’s 1988 State of the Union address, in which he chided Congress for missing budget deadlines and sending him a series of incremental continuing resolutions to fund government. He said Congress rushed through a final spending plan to avoid a government shutdown, and he held up the 3,296-page package to demonstrate his point.

“That was a total of 43 pounds of paper and ink,” Reagan said, adding that lawmakers only had a few hours to consider it. “Congress shouldn’t send another one of these.”

Reagan’s statement was greeted by a roaring ovation — by members of both parties in Congress.

If Republicans really want to follow Reagan’s lead, they should negotiate with the president and Democrats — Reagan was well-known for negotiating with his opponents.

But we won’t hold our breath waiting for this current crop of Republicans to respond to Obama. Time and again, they have shown an utter disregard for compromise. They mistakenly think Americans gave them a mandate in the last election to implement their narrow ideology. But that wasn’t what voters wanted.

Yes, people want Congress to reduce spending and the deficit, but they don’t want the budget gutted. They want government to provide important services and spur the economy. People also understand that cutting the deficit won’t happen overnight, so Congress should take a long-term approach, as the president has proposed.

Voters want Washington — especially Congress — to work. Republicans should know that pushing government to the brink of shutdown isn’t a sign of things working.