Walz and Klobuchar confident Senate funding and debt bill can clear the House
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Leaders in the U.S. Senate are negotiating a last-minute compromise to prevent a default on the national debt while reopening the shuttered federal government.
In the U.S. House, Minnesota Democrat Tim Walz says the question now is whether House Republicans will want to make changes to the legislation.
"The question will be is John Boehner willing to go down the road of rejecting that which at this late hour, this appears to me to be the last offer. This is what's going to go yes or no," Walz said.
Republicans appeared to tacitly acknowledge that any legislation from the Senate could pass the House relying mostly on Democratic support and just a handful of Republicans.
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“Hard to say it could pass with a majority of Republican votes anyway,” said Iowa Rep. Steve King, a Republican.
The current proposal said to be under negotiation in the Senate funds the government until mid-January and raises the debt limit enough to permit the federal government to borrow normally until at least mid-February.
DFL Senator Amy Klobuchar is part of a group of senators working on a proposal to avoid default and end the partial government shutdown.
"There's some momentum now, as ugly as it all seems, to get some kind of negotiations going," Klobuchar said. "We have a Senate-passed budget, the House has a House-passed budget. They are very different but this is an opportunity for us to come together, and that's one of the little things that doesn't get talked about a lot in the context of the shutdown."
Associated Press reporter David Espo contributed reporting.