Friday, December 13, 2013

House passes bipartisan budget deal


John Boehner (left) and Paul Ryan are pictured. | AP Photo
Boehner says the deal isn't perfect, but it advances conservative policy. | AP Photo




After a tumultuous and politically divisive year, the House ended 2013 on a rare bipartisan note by passing a budget deal supported by a nearly equal number of Republicans and Democrats.
The chamber voted 332-94 to approve the two-year budget deal crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). The legislation won the support of 169 Republicans and 163 Democrats. It now heads to the Senate, where it will likely pass next week. President Barack Obama signaled he would sign the bill into law.


In an interview after the vote, Ryan said the vote total was “much higher than I expected,” and that “we’re getting a little bit of integrity back into the system.”
(Also on POLITICO: Inside the budget agreement)
“I think people are hungry to get things done around here,” Ryan said. “That’s what I got, I got so many of my colleagues saying thank you for bringing some normalcy back to this place. So I’m very pleased about that.”
The deal sets discretionary spending at $1.012 trillion for the current fiscal year — a level that will rise to $1.014 trillion in fiscal 2015 — and replaces sequester cuts slated to take effect in January with more targeted spending cuts. Absent the agreement, discretionary spending would decline to $967 billion early next year with a large proportion of the cuts hitting the Pentagon.
The agreement, which includes $23 billion in net deficit reduction, doesn’t extend expanded unemployment benefits that expire at the end of December. It also does nothing about the debt ceiling, which must be addressed sometime in the spring.
Still, the budget is a breakthrough for a Congress frozen by partisan fiscal fights for the past few years. In a practical sense, the budget will help lessen the chance of a government shutdown in mid January and again in October, just before the 2014 midterm elections.
(Also on POLITICO: Budget deal rolls back spending)
Neither party appears to be jumping for joy over the agreement. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told Democrats in a closed meeting to “embrace the suck” of this bill, adding that Congress needs “to get this off the table so we can go forward.”
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters Thursday morning that the agreement is “not everything that we wanted, but it advances conservative policy and moves us in the right direction.”
Both parties believe that the budget helps them politically. With the threat of a government shutdown mostly removed, Republicans think they can keep focus on the Affordable Care Act, which has had a troubled roll out. Democrats are already laying the groundwork to use January to pressure Republicans to extend emergency jobless benefits, which expire near the end of December. And Democrats are sure to pressure Republicans in 2014 to vote on immigration reform, which has been long stalled in the House.
(WATCH: Budget deal by the numbers)
The bill marks a new stage in Ryan’s career on Capitol Hill. Long a partisan warrior who wrote budgets that made conservatives’ mouth water, Ryan has now cut a bipartisan deal that will shave the deficit by $23 billion.
The House was scheduled to wrap up its legislative year Friday, but finished its work Thursday instead. The chamber also passed a one-month extension of current farm policy, and cleared the National Defense Authorization Act.

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