WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders are nearing a deal on a two-year budget agreement that would increase military and domestic spending in exchange for long-term spending cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare.
The deal could be paired with an increase in the federal borrowing limit that would prevent a potentially disastrous default next week.
Several congressional aides said the final details of the deal are not complete and that it is still being presented to rank-and-file members to gauge their support.
House sources were hopeful that a bill could be filed as early as Monday night. The budget deal is expected to include equal increases in both domestic and military spending and would prevent a premium increase for Medicare Part B recipients from going into effect, according to aides. It would also include a clean extension of the debt limit through March 2017, effectively ensuring that Congress would not have to handle another budget or debt limit fight until after the 2016 election when a new president will be in the White House.
White House Spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Monday that the deal is not final.
“Not everything … has been agreed to,” Earnest said at a scheduled daily press briefing. “That means that nothing at this point has been agreed to. We continue to urge Republicans to continue to engage constructively with Democrats to identify common ground.”
Leaders are expected to present details of the deal to members over the coming days, setting up a very tight time frame to build support for the plan before Congress will be required to vote on debt limit increase, which the Treasury Department says needs to occur by Nov. 3.
The timing would also make the deal one of the very last items negotiated by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, before he steps down at the end of the week.
If the deal cannot be completed in the next few days, however, it would leave House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to complete negotiations if, as expected, he is elected to replace Boehner as speaker, which would put Ryan in a very difficult political position.
Aides said the deal would likely include new rules for the Social Security Disability Insurance fund, which is expected to run out of funds by the end of 2016. Discussions have also included maintaining a 2 percent cut to Medicare provider payments that were included in the 2011 Budget Control Act, also known as the sequester. Those cuts could be problematic for Democrats who have insisted that there be no changes to Medicare or Social Security in a budget deal.
The final amount of the spending increases has not been finalized, nor have the spending offsets and aides warned the deal could change substantially depending on how members respond.
There is also no guarantee that the spending cuts will be sufficient to convince wary Republicans to vote for an increase in the borrowing limit ahead of the upcoming Nov. 3 deadline. Many conservatives have said they will not vote for any debt limit increase without corresponding spending cuts, a proposal that has been a non-starter for the White House.
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