WASHINGTON — House and Senate budget negotiators say they're not close to an agreement but plan to keep at it.
"We're trying to find common ground but we're not there yet," said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. He said Republicans and Democrats have spent lots of time in the recent past airing their differences but it's now time to find a way to strike an accord. "The hard part is figuring out where we agree," Ryan said.
Ryan convened a public meeting of negotiators on Wednesday, but the session was devoted to speechmaking and hearing testimony from Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf rather than actual negotiation.
The real talks are taking place behind closed doors between Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash. The duo met most recently on Tuesday evening.
Murray said the two "have had a number of discussions since our last meeting, regarding the parameters of a potential deal, and I've been very encouraged by those conversations. They are going to continue in the days ahead and I'm hopeful we will get to a bipartisan compromise very soon."
The talks are centered on finding ways to cut spending and special interest tax breaks to replace automatic across-the-board spending cuts that are slamming the Pentagon and domestic agencies. Ryan and Murray are tight-lipped about how well the negotiations are going but many outside observers think the negotiations will get hung up over taxes.
Murray wants to use tax revenue generated by closing tax loopholes and preferences to pay for some of the cost of providing relief from the automatic cuts known as sequestration. Options including eliminating a "carried interest" exemption that allows wealthy hedge fund managers to pay a lower tax rate than salaried workers.
But Ryan and other Republicans oppose using such revenues to finance government spending. They instead want to curb loopholes and other major tax breaks but use the resulting revenue to lower income tax rates while reforming the hopelessly complex U.S. tax code. Ryan wants to cut so-called mandatory spending from the roughly two-thirds of the budget that operates on autopilot instead of being funded through annual appropriations bills.