"With just hours to go before a midnight deadline for a partial government shutdown, Democratic and Republican leaders couldn't even agree Friday over exactly what the sticking points were," our colleague Scott Neuman writes in the latest NPR.org story about the wrangling over the federal budget.
Indeed, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told reporters earlier that it's not social issues that are keeping the two sides apart — it's the Democrats' reluctance to cut spending as much as Republicans want.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) just told reporters that that spending cuts aren't the issue — it's the Republicans insistence on cutting federal funding for programs related to women's health and family planning.
Our colleague Frank James over at It's All Politics compares all this to the "chickie run" scene from Rebel Without a Cause.
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