Hill And Trump Administration Close In On 2 Year Budget Deal

[Zippyjuan]

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/22/74410...ar-budget-deal

Would call for increased spending and allow for more debt. Not just raise the debt limit but get rid of it for two years. Budget deficit for this year will be about $1 trillion- levels not seen since the stimulus for the Great Recession. A deal would avoid automatic budget cuts.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are closing in on a budget deal to raise the debt ceiling past the 2020 elections and set $1.3 trillion for defense and domestic spending for the next two years.

Congressional sources briefed on the deal said the agreement would suspend the debt limit until July 31, 2021, and include parity in spending increases for defense and domestic programs. It would include about $75 billion in offsets for those spending increases.

A formal announcement was expected as early as Monday.

The deal is likely to irritate nearly everyone on Capitol Hill, but that means it is also expected to pass as long as President Trump pledges to sign it. Republicans have generally resisted debt limit hikes and higher domestic spending without cuts, and Democrats will have to vote for raising defense spending to historic highs, a priority for this administration.

The upside is it is the last short-term budget deal necessitated to avoid automatic across-the-board spending cuts, known as sequester, enacted in a 2011 budget law that was intended to trim $1.2 trillion over the previous decade. The sequester expires in 2021.

Mnuchin has warned Congress that the debt ceiling — the nation's borrowing limit for spending it has already agreed to — would be hit in early September, earlier than anticipated. With Congress set to adjourn for August, Pelosi and Mnuchin have been in near constant phone contact hammering out the details of a deal that could pass a divided Congress and be signed by Trump.

The House would pass the deal first as they are scheduled to adjourn for the summer on Friday, and the Senate will take it up next week before they do the same.

[enhanced_deficit]

How much money for MAGA's Wall they alllocated? Projected cost was $25B.

[Zippyjuan]

Republicans wanted to spend more money. They wanted $750 billion on defense but settled for $733 billion.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/p...s-wanted-more/

Budget deal gives a big funding boost to defense, but Republicans wanted more

The Defense Department will see a hefty hike in its funding next fiscal year under the budget deal announced by the White House and Democratic leaders on Monday, but it won’t be as much as congressional Republicans wanted.

The nearly $1.4 trillion spending plan — which would prevent a government shutdown this fall and do away with the final two years of budget caps known as sequestration — includes about $738 billion in military funding for fiscal 2020, a 3 percent increase from current year levels.

President Donald Trump on Twitter hailed the deal as “a real compromise in order to give another big victory to our Great Military and Vets!”

But despite the sizable increase in military spending, the plan falls roughly $12 billion short of the level that congressional Republicans had insisted was necessary to continue military rebuilding and keep up with national security threats.

Last month, nearly every House Republican voted against their chamber’s draft of the annual defense authorization bill — a massive budget priority measure that typically draws bipartisan support — in large part because of Democrats insistence on a smaller, $733 billion funding target.

After the new spending plan was announced by the White House, they were left rationalizing their acceptance of a smaller defense total. While some fiscally conservative lawmakers voiced opposition to the plan because it would increase the deficit, the support of hawkish Republicans all but guarantees the plan will pass Congress.

“While I believe that our military needs more funding than this agreement provides, it undoubtedly makes our military stronger and more agile,” House Armed Services Committee ranking member Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said in a statement.

More at link.

Trump had wanted to cut defense spending to $700 billion but as usual changed his mind and asked for $750 billion. Flip Flopper in Chief.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...budget-1054068

“It’s 750. Secretary Mattis secured that over lunch with the president,” an administration official said of the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a figure that has not yet been announced. Mattis was joined by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas). “That’s the top line.”

That would dwarf the $733 billion budget proposal Mattis and other top military leaders have been fighting to preserve and would represent a stunning about-face for a president who recently called the fiscal 2019 top line of $716 billion for defense spending “crazy.” In October, Trump said the defense figure for 2020 would be $700 billion, a roughly 5 percent cut in line with decreases planned for other agencies.

Mattis and top military officials, including Navy Secretary Richard Spencer and the generals nominated to head two key four-star commands, have publicly pushed back hard against a cut to $700 billion, and their counteroffensive seems to have succeeded. POLITICO reported Saturday that Pentagon officials recently scrapped the $700 billion proposal they had been working on to meet the 5 percent cuts and have reverted to working on a $733 billion proposal that top generals have said is their preferred, “strategy-driven” figure.

[Zippyjuan]

The spending part of the bill is a "guideline" and will be decided in future spending bills but certainly Deficit Don will see higher spending and higher deficits/ debt.