President Obama has been saying throughout the negotiations over funding for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 that he is willing to meet House Republicans “halfway” when it comes to their desired spending reductions. But Democrats have already agreed to far more than that, as House Republicans have continually moved the goalposts instead of cutting a deal.

The original House Republican proposal for the rest of fiscal year 2011 called for about $30 billion in spending reductions from the 2010 level of spending. However, a Tea Party-inspired revolt forced Republicans to increase that total to $61 billion, which is the total that they passed in H.R.1. H.R. 1 was subsequently defeated in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said today that he would agree to $38 billion in cuts from the 2010 level, exceeding the level of cuts that the GOP asked for in its original proposal:

With the Democrats having moved so far, it’s clear that this “negotiation” is not about the budget at all, but about the various policy riders that House Republicans want to attach to a funding bill. These include provisions preventing the District of Columbia from using its own local funds for abortions and crippling the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases. It’s also worth remembering that even the original GOP proposal — which included cuts that are not as steep as those now on the table — included budget cuts that would undermine the economy, decreasing key investments and causing significant job loss.

Read more in today’s Progress Report, “Shutdown Fever.”

In separate appearances this morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced that they once again had failed to reach an agreement to fund the government. Just hours away from a federal government shutdown, Tea Party House members continue to insist that any funding agreement include a policy rider that drastically cuts money for women’s health.

The increasingly likely shutdown won’t just hurt military families, low-income students and the economic recovery: it would also deny state and local governments across the country critical funding for infrastructure, charities, and national parks — prompting job losses and deeper state budget shortfalls. Below ThinkProgress examines the top five ways a government shutdown would hurt states and local communities across the nation:

1. NO FEDERAL FUNDS FOR INFRASTRUCTURE: States and cities would lose federal funds for contractors — forcing them to halt basic road, bridge and sewer repairs, grants to local firefighters, low-income housing construction and asbestos elimination projects.

2. EXACERBATING THE STATE BUDGET CRISIS: Already cash-strapped state governments would lose federal funds that help pay for the administrative costs of running their unemployment insurance programs. States would be forced to advance the money to keep paying unemployment insurance benefits.

3. NO MONEY FOR CHARITIES: Depending on how long a shutdown lasts, cities across the nation could lose funding that goes to charities that provide critical services for the poor like the Salvation Army, the Boys and Girls Club, NeighborWorks and the Visiting Nurse Association.

4. FURLOUGHS — AND JOB LOSSES — ACROSS THE COUNTRY: A shutdown would furlough more than 800,000 non-essential federal workers across the nation. For some of those workers, especially the thousands of civilian working at military bases, those furloughs could eventually lead to job loss. After 9/11, the military, along with other federal agencies, required security clearance for civilian workers. Workers who fall into financial trouble from losing their paycheck during the shutdown could have their security clearance revoked. In New Hampshire for example, more than 6,000 workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard who live paycheck-to-paycheck could be furloughed and at risk of losing their jobs.

5. CLOSING NATIONAL PARKS AND MONUMENTS: National parks and monuments across the nation would be forced to close indefinitely during a shutdown. Not only would thousands of Park Service rangers be furloughed, but local businesses who depend on tourism will lose the more than $32 million tourists spend everyday in communities just outside the parks — and state and local governments would lose local tax revenues that tourism generates.

– Kevin Donohoe

By Igor Volsky and Pat Garofalo

Press reports indicate that Republicans may be willing to shut down the federal government if Democrats don’t accept a rider that would prohibit any additional funding to Planned Parenthood, a national organization that provides reproductive health services to women. “We’ve been close on the cuts for days,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), said yesterday, “The only things — I repeat, the only things — holding up an agreement are two of their so-called social issues: women’s health and clean air.” Reid reiterated his frustration this morning, saying, “The number we’re not bending on. We’re not bending on that and we’re not bending on women’s health.”

As Huffington Posts’ Ryan Grim reports, high level discussions have circled around the social rider — which, as the Wonk Room has previously reported — actually increases federal spending:

At a late-night White House meeting between the president and key congressional leaders, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) made clear that his conference would not approve funding for the government if any money were allowed to flow to Planned Parenthood through legislation known as Title X. “This comes down to women’s health issues related to Title X,” a person in the meeting told HuffPost.

The negotiations are dominated by men: All of the principal negotiators in both parties are male, as are most of the senior staff involved. (House Democrats, led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have largely been left out of key talks.)

House Republicans have been insisting the roadblock to cutting a new budget deal is not just the culture-war riders attached to the spending plan, but a source familiar with a top-level White House meeting earlier Thursday said most of the discussion in fact was about the riders.

According to The Guttmacher Institute, “every dollar spent on family planning saves taxpayers $3.74 in government spending on prenatal care, childbirth, and the first year of an infant’s health care. But if more women who are financially stressed end up bearing children they don’t want, the costs of pregnancy and infant care will quickly be dwarfed by government spending on public assistance, food stamps, and health care.” Moreover, pushing contraceptive care patients from Planned Parenthood to other clinics — as the Republicans are now proposing — would “cost the government an additional $174 million a year.”

At this point, it’s worth remembering that even the threat of a shutdown can increase federal spending. As an Obama administration staffer told Steve Benen yesterday, just the contingency plans that are being put in place in case of a shutdown are costing the government money. The last government shutdown cost the government about $800 million in additional spending, while a shutdown could actually increase the deficit by increasing the cost of financing the nation’s debt (as it did in 1995).