US House of Representatives Republican leaders struck a budget deal made with the White House just before midnight on Monday aimed at averting a government shutdown and forestalling a debt crisis.
House Speaker John Boehner was making one final appeal to restive Republicans: Pass the hard-won agreement with US President Barack Obama before Representative Paul Ryan assumes the speaker’s job later this week. However, he encountered immediate resistance when he laid out the plan on Monday night. His plan is for members to vote on the deal today.
The budget pact, in concert with a must-pass increase in the federal borrowing limit, would solve the thorniest issues awaiting Ryan, who is set to be elected speaker tomorrow.
Photo: AP
The deal would also take budget showdowns and government shutdown fights off the table until after next year’s presidential election, a potential boon to Republican candidates who might otherwise face uncomfortable questions about messes in the Republican-led Congress.
Congress must raise the federal borrowing limit by Tuesday next week or risk a first-ever default, while money to pay for government operations runs out Dec. 11 unless Congress acts. The emerging framework would give both the Pentagon and domestic agencies two years of budget relief of US$80 billion in exchange for cuts elsewhere in the budget.
Outlined for rank-and-file Republicans in a closed-door session, the budget relief would total US$50 billion in the first year and US$30 billion in the second year.
“Let’s declare success,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told Republicans, according to Representative David Jolly as the leadership sought to rally support for the emerging deal.
A chief selling point for Republican leaders is that the alternative is chaos and a stand-alone debt limit increase that might be forced on Republicans, but conservatives in the conference who drove Boehner to resign were not ready to fall in line.
“This is again just the umpteenth time that you have this big, big, huge deal that’ll last for two years and we were told nothing about it,” Representative John Fleming said.
“I’m not excited about it at all,” Representative Matt Salmon said. “A two-year budget deal that raises the debt ceiling for basically the entire term of this presidency.”
The measure would suspend the current US$18.1 trillion debt limit through March 2017.
The budget side of the deal is aimed at undoing automatic spending cuts which are a byproduct of a 2011 budget and debt deal and the failure of Washington to subsequently tackle the government’s fiscal woes. Republican defense hawks are intent on reversing the automatic cuts and getting more money for the military.
The focus is on setting a new overall spending limit for agencies whose operating budgets are set by Congress each year. It is up to the House and Senate Appropriations committees to produce a detailed omnibus spending bill by the Dec. 11 deadline.
The tentative pact anticipates designating further increases for the Pentagon as emergency war funds that can be made exempt from budget caps. Offsetting spending cuts that would pay for domestic spending increases included curbs on certain Medicare payments for outpatient services provided by hospitals and an extension of a 2-percentage-point cut in Medicare payments to doctors through the end of a 10-year budget.
The deal, which would apply to the 2016-2017 budget years, resembles a pact that Ryan himself put together two years ago in concert with Democratic Senator Patty Murray that eased automatic spending cuts for last year and this year’s budgets. A lot of conservatives disliked that measure.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese