Bipartisan negotiators reach modest US budget pact

WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators, in a rare show of bipartisanship, reached a modest U.S. budget agreement Tuesday to restore about $65 billion in automatic spending cuts from programs ranging from parks to the Defense Department, with votes expected in both houses by week's end.

Officials said the increases would be offset by a variety of spending reductions and increased fees elsewhere in the budget totaling about $85 billion over a decade, enough for a largely symbolic cut of roughly $20 billion in the nation's $17 trillion debt.

The White House quickly issued a statement from President Barack Obama praising the deal as a "good first step."

The bipartisan push for a budget agreement stems from automatic cuts that are themselves the consequence of divided government's ability to complete a sweeping deficit reduction package in 2011.

The U.S. federal budget year begins on Oct. 1. But the Congress, snarled in political disagreements, could not agree to a budget plan at the time and the government was shut down. The fight centered on Republican attempts to block funding for President Barack Obama's overhaul to the American health care system. Republicans relented when it became clear Americans were deeply angered over that tactic.

Announcement of the new deal came in the form of a statement from the two negotiators, Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat, and Rep. Paul Ryan, a Republican. The lawmakers chair the budget committees in the two houses of Congress, and negotiated the deal in secretive talks over recent weeks.

While Tuesday's agreement would have little impact on deficits, it holds the potential for avoiding politically charged budget clashes for the next year or two. It also was reached without the threat of an impending catastrophic deadline hanging over the lawmakers' heads.

But the plan does nothing to address three of the big drivers of American deficit spending — the Medicare government health insurance program for the elderly, the Medicaid aid program for the poor and the Social Security government pension plan.

Conservatives are upset that the plan rolls back spending cuts, known as the sequester, while liberals are angered about the requirement that federal employees will have to pay more toward their pension accounts. Significantly for Democrats, they failed in their bid to include an extension of benefits for workers unemployed longer than 26 weeks. The program expires on Dec. 28, when payments will be cut off for an estimated 1.3 million individuals.

Officials said that under the agreement, an estimated $65 billion in automatic spending cuts would be restored through the end of the next budget year, which runs to Sept. 30, 2015.

The same was not true of conservative organizations, which attacked the proposal as a betrayal of a hard-won 2011 agreement that reduced government spending and is counted as among the main accomplishments of conservative tea party-aligned Republicans who came to power earlier the same year in the House.

Americans for Prosperity issued a midmorning statement saying that Republican lawmakers should uphold current spending levels. Otherwise, the group said, "congressional Republicans are joining liberal Democrats in breaking their word to the American people to finally begin reining in government overspending that has left us over $17 trillion in debt."

Given the internal Republican divisions in the House, its leader, Speaker John Boehner, is likely to need Democratic votes to approve any deal by Ryan and Murray. It was not immediately clear how many Democratic lawmakers would support a plan that lacked an extension of unemployment benefits.

If left in place, the reductions would carve $91 billion from the day-to-day budgets of the Pentagon and domestic agencies when compared with spending limits set by the hard-fought 2011 budget agreement.

Support for a deal to ease the reductions is strongest in Congress among defense hawks in both houses and both parties who fear the impact on military readiness from a looming $20 billion cut in Pentagon spending.

The White House wants a deal for a same reason, but also to ease the impact of automatic cuts on domestic programs from education to transportation to the national parks.