Congress, White House strike deal to raise debt ceiling

With the ongoing debt ceiling and budget negotiations-an effort to raise the debt ceiling significantly, and an effort to push through a budget deal that ties a future Congress to increased spending limits being pushed by outgoing House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)-coming barreling down the pike, Ryan could be further jeopardized by those. But he encountered immediate resistance when he laid out the plan Monday night. To be sure, the angst is already apparent: During a closed Republican meeting Monday evneing, Rep. Curt Clawson (R-Fla.) criticized the possibility of Boehner cutting a deal on major policy changes that will ripple long after he’s gone. The House failed to take up a bill last Friday that would have raised the debt limit by $1.5 to last until March 2017.

Leading hard-line conservatives in the House of Representatives said they could imagine a peaceful honeymoon with Paul Ryan if he becomes speaker of the House, as expected, provided he takes steps they favor to decentralize House power.

Congress has until Nov.3 to strike a deal to raise the debt limit before the country hits its borrowing limit and faces a potential government shutdown after December 11 if a budget deal isn’t reached.

The legislation could be filed as early as Monday night with a House vote likely Wednesday – the same day as House Republicans vote to elect a new speaker.

“This is obviously a positive development for defense, but it’s hardly a done deal”, Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert with the Center for Strategic and global Studies, said Monday.

Obama wants roughly $74 billion in additional defense and nondefense spending this year. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said after the Senate Republican meeting, citing concerns with how the proposal offsets new spending. Such a turn of events would correspond to what Ryan should have (and may have, behind the scenes) demanded: that the departing speaker get the blame for raising the debt limit and agreeing to fund the government without a shutdown. Moreover, the deal would spread out increases in Medicare premiums over time so beneficiaries don’t feel them acutely.

The deal would adjust spending caps for two years by a total of $80 billion – $50 billion the first year and $30 billion in the second – equally divided between defense and nondefense spending, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. Many conservatives disliked the measure and many on the GOP’s right flank are likely to oppose the new one, which would apply to the 2016-2017 budget years. Patty Murray, D-Wash., that eased automatic spending cuts for the 2014-15 budget years. A lot of conservatives disliked that measure.

But if a budget deal moved at the same time, Republicans could point to the cuts Democrats agreed to in order to argue they were winning concessions from the White House. “That means that nothing at this point has been agreed to”.

The Alabama freshman congressman did not say whether he voted for Ryan but said Ryan told caucus members that he was committed to making the process of getting bills to the House floor more democratic. The emerging framework would give both the Pentagon and domestic agencies two years of budget relief in exchange for cuts elsewhere in the budget. He said earlier this year that the Budget Control Act “actually did a pretty good job” of reducing government spending and he is reluctant to negotiate any spending increases.

“I worked for a corporation that didn’t allow for enough paid family leave for me for me to handle my daughter’s chronic illness”, said Aker, who now works from home. I want to get all the details.

Boehner, who announced his resignation last month after years of being hounded by hard-line lawmakers on his party’s right, had said he hoped to clear the way for his successor by dispensing with a few tough issues.

Several congressional aides, however, said the final details are not complete and that the outlines of the tentative agreement are still being presented to rank-and-file members.

“In Washington, cleaning the barn is apparently synonymous with shoveling manure on the American people”, said Heritage Action Chief Executive Michael A. Needham.