WASHINGTON (NEWSnet/AP) — Congressional leaders say they have reached an agreement on "topline spending" levels that could help avoid a partial government shutdown.
The agreement largely hues to spending caps for defense and domestic programs that Congress set as part of a bill to suspend the debt limit until 2025.
But it does provide some concessions to House Republicans who viewed the spending restrictions in that agreement as insufficient.
In a letter to colleagues, House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday it will secure $16 billion in additional spending cuts from the previous agreement brokered by then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden and is about $30 billion less than what the Senate was considering.
“This represents the most favorable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade,” Johnson writes.
In a joint statement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries voiced their support for the agreement.
“It will also allow us to keep the investments for hardworking American families secured by the legislative achievements of President Biden and Congressional Democrats,” Schumer and Jeffries said.
And Biden said, “It reflects the funding levels that I negotiated with both parties and signed into law last spring. It rejects deep cuts to programs hardworking families count on, and provides a path to passing full-year funding bills that deliver for the American people and are free of any extreme policies.”
The agreement speeds up the roughly $20 billion in cuts already agreed to for the Internal Revenue Service and rescinds about $6 billion in COVID relief funds that had been approved but not yet spent, according to Johnson’s letter.
Lawmakers needed an agreement on overall spending levels so that appropriators could write the bills that set line-by-line funding for agencies. Funding is set to lapse Jan. 19 for some agencies and Feb. 2 for others.
The agreement is separate from the negotiations that are taking place regarding funding for Israel and Ukraine, along with U.S. border issues.
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