Sources Claim Budget Committee Is Nearing an Agreement

With the end to the 16-day federal shutdown in mid-October came yet another congressional committee assigned to work out a budget deal. That committee, hurried by a December 13 deadline, hasn’t shown much interest in a long-term “grand bargain” that might include reforms to entitlement programs and taxes, but POLITICO reports that a smaller deal—one that addresses the most immediate disagreements over short-term spending—may be on its way.

Recall that annual appropriations funding (which covers funding for about a third of the federal government) for the current fiscal year still has not been decided. Instead, lawmakers appropriated the funding using a temporary stopgap measure.

According to POLITICO, the committee is working on a plan that would finalize that funding by rolling back some of the limits that lawmakers placed on annual appropriations funding under the Budget Control Act of 2011, at least through fiscal year 2015. That rollback would total about $80 billion to both domestic and defense programs and effectively restore some of the spending reduction wrought by the 2013 sequester cuts. The deal reportedly includes savings in some budget areas, as well as fee increases (but not tax hikes) to offset part of the new funding.

The committee is working on a plan that would finalize 2014 funding by rolling back some of the limits on annual appropriations funding, at least through fiscal year 2015.

That does sound like progress, given that the budget committee seemed doomed for failure just a few weeks ago. House and Senate lawmakers were struggling to reach agreement before the fiscal year started on October 1, and even shut down the government for 16 days.

The news of a potential deal in the works is surprising for another reason. The annual spending limit for fiscal year 2014 is reported to be somewhere around $1 trillion for fiscal year 2014. All year long the House and Senate have proposed dramatically different limits: The Senate Democrats’ at $1.058 trillion and the House at $966 billion. The president sided with Senate Democrats, at $1.057 trillion. That’s a cavernous difference for the two chambers to overcome. And it now looks like they are just going to split the difference.

Before anyone thinks that is a bitter pill for House Republicans to swallow, consider that earlier this year, House Republicans had to pull a funding bill from a House Appropriations subcommittee that would have dramatically cut spending for the Departments of Labor, Health & Human Services, and Education. Reports said that some House GOP members refused to bear the significant cuts to programs in those agencies that their proposed spending limit would have forced. So maybe this will be a workable deal.

Nevertheless, POLITICO says House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) plans to pass a spending bill at the originally planned $966 billion level next week unless the budget conference committee reaches a deal by its deadline. Then again, there’s still wiggle room on that deadline, too. Speaker Boehner wants to adjourn the House by December 13 for the remainder of the calendar year, but he’s agreed to hold lawmakers in Washington past then if a deal seems imminent – maybe the best chance education stakeholders have for reversing some of the damage done by last year’s sequester, and preventing more damage moving forward.

Check back with EdCentral for more Capitol Hill drama in the coming weeks.“