The crisis loams, the doors close shut, people dependent on government paychecks whirl like dervishes in panic wondering how they will pay for food and shelter. An hour before the clock strikes twelve, when all turn into pumpkins, a deal is struck to not shut down the government.

A deal has been reached between U.S. President Barack Obama and congressional leaders on a budget plan for the rest of this fiscal year that would avert a government shutdown, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Friday.

What was thrown to the lobbyists to make it at the last hour? It appears part of the agenda to destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, now known as the Consumer Financial Bureau, was added as a rider to the 2011 budget.

Trust a financial sector lobbyist to bring both sides together. We all know the banks don't want any agency whatsoever trying to enact consumer protections.

Just today Elizabeth Warren said the Republican agenda against the Consumer Financial Bureau was all about benefiting the banks:

Republican lawmakers are doing Wall Street’s bidding by trying to restructure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding and leadership, Obama administration adviser Elizabeth Warren said today.

“This is precisely the goal of the forces at work to politicize the CFPB’s funding,” said Warren, the special adviser in charge of setting up the bureau, in remarks at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers conference in Dallas. “If they succeed, the beneficiaries will be some of the same institutions that precipitated the financial crisis.”

Representative Spencer Bachus, the Alabama Republican who leads the House Financial Services Committee, has introduced legislation to replace the CFPB director position created by the Dodd-Frank Act with a five-person commission. Representative Randy Neugebauer, a Texas Republican on the Financial Services panel, has proposed making the bureau’s budget subject to congressional appropriations.

Without independent funding, the bureau would have to “kowtow to powerful banking opposition, making it less accountable to the American people,” Warren said, rejecting the lawmakers’ contention that the changes would make the consumer agency more accountable.

“In the guise of greater accountability, it would be possible to restructure the new consumer agency to make it less -- not more -- likely to achieve its stated goals,” Warren said.

Truly Kabuki theater, even with the classic bait and switch behind closed doors. Of course it was never about planned parenthood, instead, all about the banks. We know both parties can agree on screwing the financial consumer and middle class, little conflict there.

By the way, Planned Parenthood, they have nothing to do with abortions, there is no federal funding of abortions.

Bloomberg has more details:

U.S. Congress leaders reached an accord to slash $39 billion from federal spending this year while jettisoning Republican provisos that would have defunded Planned Parenthood and blocked environmental rules, pulling the government back from the brink of a shutdown with less than two hours to spare.