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Senate majority leader announces 2-year budget accord

Some congressional negotiators also wanted to include a hike in the debt limit, which the United States is expected to hit next month, though the exact parameters were still being negotiated when the deal was announced.

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The House easily passed the spending bill after 5:30 in the morning, and President Trump signed it into law. “I particularly want to thank my friend, the Democratic leader”, McConnell said.

“I can’t in all good honesty, in all good faith, just look the other way because my party is now complicit in the deficits”, the senator said on the Senate floor.

“Senator Rand Paul is asking for is a 15-minute vote on his amendment to restore the budget caps”, Paul spokesman Sergio Gor tweeted. Stopgaps are needed when Congress fails to approve a full budget on time by that date.

In January, Senate Democrats voted against a short-term spending bill because it did not provide protections for Dreamers.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer unveiled a bipartisan budget deal on the Senate floor on Wednesday that would boost military and non-defense spending by $300 billion over the next two years, as well as include a hike in the debt ceiling and more than $80 billion in disaster relief.

The bill also included a one-time emergency influx of about $90 billion to help with ongoing recovery efforts for the hurricanes and wildfires that have hit the U.S.in recent months. “After months of fiscal brinkmanship, this budget deal is the real first sprout of bipartisanship, and it should break the long cycle of spending crises that have snarled this Congress and hampered the middle class”.

The bill doesn’t address immigration issues, such as protecting the young, undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers”. The next-longest continuous House floor speech occurred more than a century ago, when Champ Clark of Missouri spoke against the 1909 tariff overhaul for five hours and 15 minutes.

In financial markets, yields on benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR rose on news of the budget deal, on expectations of higher growth and potentially greater Treasury supply. On Friday morning, US stock futures were rising (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/US-stock-futures-rise-as-dow-faces-worst-week-since-the-global-financial-crisis-2018-02-09) after a bruising day on Wall Street Thursday (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dow-poised-to-edge-up-as-traders-lick-their-wounds-after-a-punishing-stretch-2018-02-08). The Dow Jones industrial average closed down more than 1,000 points for the second time this week. Inflation concerns and rising rates are blamed for the selloff, but some analysts have noted equities were due for a pullback after gains in January and a year ago.

The House Freedom Caucus, the chamber’s fiscally conservative wing, also opposes the bill out of concerns that it would lead to more government spending. In the coming weeks, lawmakers will turn the deal into specific spending legislation.

“Once again, Republicans are retreating on the Budget Control Act and returning to their profligate ways”, Jason Pye, vice president of legislative affairs for FreedomWorks, said in a statement.

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One day before a threatened USA government shutdown, Senate leaders on Wednesday struck a bipartisan deal that would keep the federal government funded for two years but left contentious immigration topics unaddressed, Voice of America reports. John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican.

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