With funding for the federal government set to expire at the end of the week, the region's federal workers and District of Columbia employees and residents are getting that familiar, anxious feeling again.
For the second time in nine months, political gridlock threatens to shut D.C. down.
"It is embarrassing," Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., admitted Sunday on CNN's ``State of the Union.'' Warner asked: ``Can we, once again, inflict on the country and the American people the spectacle of a near government shutdown?''
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At issue is a small part of the $1.3 trillion budget intended for an infrequent purpose: federal dollars to help victims of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters and whether some of the expense should be offset by cuts in other government spending.
On Friday, the Democratic-controlled Senate blocked the House bill that would provide stop-gap federal spending, plus aid for people battered by a spate of natural disasters. The legislation also calls for $1.6 billion in spending cuts to help defray the disaster costs.
Democrats complained that it's unprecedented and unfair to insist that spending cuts accompany badly needed emergency aid.
The Senate votes Monday on a Democratic bill to extend government spending until November. As of now, funding runs out on Friday.
The bill would also give $3.7 billion to FEMA, whose disaster relief funding for victims of natural disasters is almost dry. That amount is the same as in the House Republican bill Democratic senators shot down last week.
But the Senate bill doesn't propose spending cuts to offset some of the disaster relief funding - cuts from clean energy programs that Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer calls ``job killing.''
Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell says not off-setting costs has led to the huge deficits the country is facing. And he believes he has enough votes to block the Democrats' plan.
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