A last minute deal on budgetary spending between Republicans, Democrats and the White House reached late on Friday, avoided an imminent government shutdown.US President Barack Obama announced about an hour before the shutdown was to begin that leaders in both parties reached an agreement that will allow the small businesses to get the loans they need, the families to get the mortgages they applied for and thousands of Americans to show up at work and take home their paychecks on time, including army personnel. Obama's statement was preceded by hours of negotiations and several meetings between Obama, the House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In a joint statement, Reid and Boehner said, an agreement is reached on an historic amount of cuts for the remainder of this fiscal year, as well as a short-term bridge that will give time to avoid a shutdown.