Both sides agree: No major budget deal foreseen

FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2013, photo, House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., laughs as he walks to his office on Capitol Hill in Washington. Forget a grand bargain. Reaching even a small budget deal will be a challenge when negotiators start meeting in an effort to salvage any kind of agreement in the aftermath of this month’s shutdown debacle and debt limit crisis. "If we focus on some big, grand bargain then we’re going to focus on our differences and both sides are going to require that the other side compromises some core principle and then we’ll get nothing done," Ryan, said in an interview on Oct. 24. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2013, photo, House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., laughs as he walks to his office on Capitol Hill in Washington. Forget a grand bargain. Reaching even a small budget deal will be a challenge when negotiators start meeting in an effort to salvage any kind of agreement in the aftermath of this month’s shutdown debacle and debt limit crisis. "If we focus on some big, grand bargain then we’re going to focus on our differences and both sides are going to require that the other side compromises some core principle and then we’ll get nothing done," Ryan, said in an interview on Oct. 24. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — On this, Republican budget guru Rep. Paul Ryan and the Senate's top Democrat, Harry Reid, can agree: There won't be a "grand bargain" on the budget.

Instead, the Wisconsin Republican and the Nevada Democrat both say the best Washington can do in this bitterly partisan era of divided government is a small-ball bargain that tries to take the edge off of automatic budget cuts known as sequestration.

Official Capitol Hill negotiations start next week, but Ryan and Reid both weighed in Thursday to tamp down any expectations that the talks might forge a large-scale agreement after several previous high-level talks have failed.

According to lawmakers, their aides and observers who will be monitoring the talks, long-standing, entrenched differences over taxes make a large-scale budget pact virtually impossible.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-25-Budget%20Battle/id-72362e11ada840c2b7e67bca895fc1dd
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