Enjoy the next 18 months of relative solitude while it lasts.
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The agreement is the result of weeks of negotiations led by House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the leaders of the Republican-led House and Senate, plus House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic head Harry Reid.
Home Republican leaders have unveiled a tentative two-year finances agreement with the Obama White Home aimed toward preventing a partial authorities shutdown & & forestalling a debt crisis. The budget deal stands as an in-your-face rebuttal to his hardline antagonists, on Capitol Hill and off, who angrily oppose spending increases and compromises with Democratic President Barack Obama.
“I don’t see how a clean debt ceiling [increase] passes this floor”, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) told reporters Monday. “I think it’s a very important step in giving the Republican nominee a better chance of actually prevailing next fall”.
Representative Thomas Massie, a hard-line conservative, acknowledged that he and other opponents will not be able to stop the budget and debt limit deal.
One House Republican critic, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, accuses Boehner of being “in league with the Democrats”. “I mean I don’t think there’s anything you can do at this point”.
“The thing that markets want most from Washington is certainty and stability, and they get that through this sort of a deal”, said Terry Haines, a policy analyst at ISI Evercore in Washington. If the deal passes, Ryan could have a clear path to do his job without the fiscal brinksmanship that damaged Boehner’s speakership. “We would want [Ryan] to change the process, to make it more transparent, to let the committees do their work early, and to make sure that all members have the opportunity to weigh in early rather than find out when it’s too late”, Fleming said.
At a Monday press briefing, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said: “We continue to urge Republicans to continue to engage constructively with Democrats to identify common ground” to complete a budget and debt limit deal. Few people get the opportunity to serve so highly in their political careers, and now he gets to spend his golden years playing golf and smoking cigarettes and “consulting on the side” at a going rate of something like $10 million an hour.
“We’ve had the outline of the deal offered to us, we’re now awaiting to get the details”, Representative Darrell Issa said at the end of a closed-door meeting of House Republicans. A lot of conservatives disliked that measure.
Negotiators looked to address two other key issues as well: a shortfall looming next year in Social Security payments to the disabled and a large increase for many retirees in Medicare premiums and deductibles for doctors’ visits and other outpatient care. And it would permit about $16 billion to be added on top of that in 2016, classified as war funding, with a comparable boost in 2017. Also, Ryan was the chief architect of a similar deal that lifted the spending caps two years ago. Patty Murray, D-Wash., that eased automatic spending cuts for the 2014-2015 budget years.
“I’m not excited about it at all”, Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., said of the agreement.
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The added spending would be offset by more than $168 billion in long-term savings from reforms to the Social Security Disability Insurance program, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.
