Boehner Seeks House GOP Backing on Budget Deal

Ryan has yet to comment on the deal, and Fleming said it “would be appreciated” if he explains where he stands before the speaker vote. The speaker-to-be held off on assessing the deal, saying he had to review it, but he expressed frustration with the rush job. But the vote hasn’t haunted Ryan, or anyone else who backed the deal – numerous same folks angry at Ryan for his original budget draft now back Ryan’s Speakership to the hilt. Last week, the group said a supermajority of its members would back Ryan for speaker, but the Freedom Caucus did not officially endorse him. “I hope that Paul Ryan will let us know how he feels about the process”.

House Republicans scheduled a meeting this morning to consider the plan – and a few conservatives are already grumbling.

At that meeting, however, the tension was rife.

Any fiscal deal would have to be approved by the full House and Senate before being submitted to Obama.

“We successfully secured equal increases in funding defense and non-defense priorities”, said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Across the Capitol, the complaints were just as sharp. It also would be the second partial fix to the mandatory federal budget caps that were passed by Congress in 2011 and have been lamented ever since. “I mean I don’t think there’s anything you can do at this point”.

In one sense, the accord clears the deck for Ryan, pushing the next major budget battles past the presidential election and well into 2017.

“Fiscal negotiations are ongoing”, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said as he opened the Senate on Monday afternoon.

The deal would see the Pentagon and domestic agencies given two years of budget relief, allowing an additional $80bn of spending in exchange for cuts elsewhere in the budget.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who’ll wrap up his lengthy congressional career this week, has told reporters in recent days that he’s determined to “clean the barn up” before his successor takes his place.

“It is past time that we do away with the harmful, draconian sequester cuts”, said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

In July, Medicare actuaries predicted that monthly premiums would increase to about $159 for such beneficiaries, up from about $105.

The Obama administration said the budget and debt limit pact would protect Social Security and Medicare recipients from cuts. Many conservatives complain that they’re not being given enough time to review the agreement. Another cut is a repeal of the auto-enrollment mandate that is part of Obamacare, the healthcare law requiring employers to enroll their employees to healthcare plans.

In his last days as speaker, John Boehner was intent on getting the measure through Congress quickly to head off a market-rattling debt crisis next week and a government shutdown in December.

“We have worked assiduously to protect the privacy and confidentiality of those discussions” because the negotiators have been operating under the principle that no single item would be agreed to until every issue under discussion had been settled, Earnest said.

Raising the debt limit has been a political minefield in recent years.

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.

But the deal may ultimately pass because lawmakers realize they have little choice as they stare at a potential default next week.