The House and Senate are preparing to give themselves another three weeks to resolve their so-far intractable spending fight before heading out on recess for one of those weeks.
The new three-week extension, which cuts $6 billion from spending on current programs, is set to be on the House floor Tuesday and then win approval in the Senate and be signed by President Obama before the current two-week measure expires Friday.
But there is a growing sentiment in Congress that lawmakers cannot keep funding the government in fits and starts and that the two sides must work out a deal to keep the government open through Sept. 30 before the new bill expires April 8.
Still, Republicans and Democrats remain tens of billions of dollars apart on how deeply to cut, with Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, urging caution during an appearance Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“We cannot solve this problem in six months,” Mr. Durbin said of mounting budget deficits. “We have to look at it in the medium and long term for the good of this nation and for our financial reputation in the world.”
Republicans said they intended to see the temporary measure win passage but continued to hit President Obama for not playing more of a leading role in the spending negotiations.
“He enlisted the vice president to be the negotiator,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the No. 3 House Republican, said on CNN. “They came in for one meeting, then the vice president left the country and we’re only funded for two weeks. How serious are they about solving this problem?”
President Obama is scheduled to leave at the end of the week for a trip to South America, limiting his direct participation in any talks but Congress will be gone at the same time.
The temporary funding bill would bring to $10 billion the amount of cuts that lawmakers have enacted in recent weeks as they have pushed stop-gap measures as a way to avoid a government shutdown. But both Democrats and Republicans say they have to get beyond the short-term budgeting, which could cause bookkeeping problems and other difficulties for federal agencies.
While they continue to bicker over the broad level of cuts, there is one line-item that House Republicans seem intent on taking on by itself. With National Public Radio in the middle of controversy, the leadership plans to bring a measure to the floor this week going after funding for N.P.R., a long-time target of conservative Republicans.