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Obama calls budget deal as a ‘good first step’
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Top Republicans and President Barack Obama are lining up behind a modest US budget agreement that restores about US$63 billion in automatic spending cuts from programs ranging from parks to the Defense Department and eliminates the threat of another partial government shutdown early next year.
The deal to ease those cuts for two years is aimed less at chipping away at the nation’s US$17 trillion national debt than it is at trying to help a dysfunctional Capitol stop lurching from crisis to crisis. It would set the stage for action in January on a US$1 trillion-plus spending bill for the budget year that began in October.
The measure unveiled by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Republican, and his Senate counterpart, Democrat Patty Murray, blends US$85 billion in spending cuts and revenue from new and extended fees to replace US$63 billion in reductions to agency budgets over the coming two years.
The White House quickly issued a statement from Obama praising the deal as a “good first step.” He urged lawmakers in both parties to follow up and “actually pass a budget based on this agreement so I can sign it into law and our economy can continue growing and creating jobs without more Washington headwinds.”
Bipartisan approval is expected in both houses of Congress in the next several days, despite grumbling from liberals over the omission of an extension of long-term unemployment benefits and even though hardcore conservative tea party-aligned groups have already begun pushing Republican lawmakers to oppose it.
The package would raise the Transportation Security Administration fee on a typical nonstop, round-trip airline ticket from US$5 to US$10; require newly hired federal workers to contribute 1.3 percentage points more of their salaries toward their pensions; and trim cost-of-living adjustments to the pensions of military retirees under the age of 62. Hospitals and other health care providers would have to absorb two additional years of a 2-percentage-point cut in their reimbursements from a government program providing health care coverage to the elderly.
The US federal budget year begins on October 1. But Congress, snarled in political disagreements, could not agree to a budget plan at the time and the government was shut down.
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