The Hill News

The White House stressed on Wednesday that lawmakers on Capitol Hill must resolve a dispute over how to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year before moving onto broader fiscal issues.

White House press secretary Jay Carney responded to a proposal put forth by some Senate Democrats to broaden negotiations to consider other areas than domestic discretionary spending. Carney said that President Obama wants to deal with broader issues, but that lawmakers must focus on passing a seven-month funding bill.

{mosads}"We are in a situation, as we were last week, where the government shuts down on March 18," Carney told reporters at his daily press briefing. "We need to resolve the issue on the table, which is funding for fiscal year 2011. So we're not waiting for anything to get to those talks."

Carney's remarks came after Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the third-ranking Senate Democrat, proposed a "reset" on the spending debate, saying that lawmakers should also consider changes to mandatory spending and "revenue raisers," which could include tax hikes.

Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill have said cuts contained in current spending plan take too much away from domestic discretionary spending items, a smaller portion of the budget.

Lawmakers find themselves stuck at an impasse over a funding measure for this year after two test votes on Republican and Democratic proposals failed in the Senate Wednesday afternoon.

President Obama's long-term budget pro! posals contains changes to those additional areas, but Carney stressed that there is not enough time to take up a broad range of issues before government funding is again due to expire.

"I'm not making a dividing line," he said. "But I don't think that anyone thinks between now and March 18 we will resolve entitlement reform, tax expenditures, and all the other issues that go into a much bigger deal."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), however, suggested Wednesday that senators have begun to talk about long-term proposals.

"With this vote out of the way, we're going to do some serious negotiations now -- this paves the way to get something done," Reid told Talking Points Memo. "We'r! e working on a number of issues. But our goal is to fund the g! overnmen t the rest of this year, and then out-years. This isn't just for the next few weeks. We want to try to get a universal deal, and do something good for the country."