US budget deal agreed in Congress

WASHINGTON: -- A cross-party Congressional budget committee convened after an October government shutdown has reached an agreement to fund federal services.

The deal finances the government for two years and reduces the federal deficit by $23b (£14b).

It also avoids automatically triggering another government shutdown on 15 January.

It "cuts spending in a smarter way," Republican Congressman Paul Ryan said on Tuesday.

The budget deal also offsets $63b in previously enacted automatic military and domestic spending cuts triggered in January when Democrats and Republicans failed to reach a budget compromise.

Mr Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray, the respective chairs of the House and Senate budget committees, were called on to reach a cross-party budget deal in the wake of October's partial government shutdown over federal spending.

"We have broken through the partisanship and gridlock," Ms Murray said of the new deal.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25327831


-- BBC 2013-12-11

23B is a drop in the bucket. That should be 2.3 trillion not billion. I am sick of spend thrifts with no idea of how to stop spending.

Still a drag on all taxpayers.

If Paul Ryan is behind it, it can't be all bad although I suspect he had to make compromises he didn't like. He could never get what he really wants approved, but some deal is necessary.

What it would take to balance the federal budget is to get the economy rolling to get more people off "entitlements" which is the #1 expense for the government, and instead get those people working and paying taxes.

In accounting there is something called "the rule of double." If you stop paying someone $1,000 per month, and instead start collecting $1,000 per month from him in taxes, you are ahead by $2,000.

The anti-everything people need to be squashed. The US needs to try to get people to work by freeing up more timber sales, mining for coal which it knows how to burn cleanly for electricity and steel production, producing its own steel again, going after oil and gas on federal land even though private land is causing an oil and gas boom, mining rare earth supplies, and so on. This is all shut down, and these are activities that create really good jobs from which real taxes are paid - not only by the employees but by the companies that hire them.

The US is incredibly wealthy. The private sector owns technology and is booming. Private corporations are doing very well, and are not to be confused with the hapless government. The US is wealthy in natural resources but they need to be used. Trees for instance are a renewable resource, and the US already has 100 years worth of natural gas drilled and on line. It will soon be the world's #1 producer of oil and natural gas without touching what is on government land and offshore.

There is no such thing as "peak oil." Oil is being found at rates so high that no one can estimate when it might run short. But I think that in 100 years science will have found a replacement.

All the US has to do is to get the blind and overzealous environmentalists out of the way and get to work. Many people don't know that the US government owns more land than the private sector, not to mention its 88,000 miles of saltwater shoreline where there is oil, gas, and fisheries.

Let's get back to work. The new oil and gas boom is just one example of what can happen.

Obviously the GOP realised what bad press it got from the shutdown and wanted to avoid another one.

Obviously the GOP realised what bad press it got from the shutdown and wanted to avoid another one.

I wonder who told them. I don't think they do much reading.

Obviously the GOP realised what bad press it got from the shutdown and wanted to avoid another one.

They are having too good of a time saying "I told you so" about the Obamacare debacle and don't want get distracted.

Obviously the GOP realised what bad press it got from the shutdown and wanted to avoid another one.

They are having too good of a time saying "I told you so" about the Obamacare debacle and don't want get distracted.

I saw Paul Ryan being interviewed tonight. He wants no more distraction about budgets and shutdowns coming up in January. He wants to focus the message on Obamacare. Almost every day something new is popping up that is bad about Obamacare. Today it is a sudden shock that certain expensive prescription drugs either won't be covered, or will have a very high co-pay.

The anti-everything people need to be squashed.

I agree with all you wrote but wish the anti-raise the debt people would not only continue but get

more of a spine. It is starting to seem like neither side is serious about cutting it.

23b? Are they kidding? I bet 23B will not even cover the interest on what the next raising of the debt is.

Saw this about Boehner

& remembered George Thorogoods lyrics..

He said "I don't know man, ah she kinda funny, you know" I said "I know, everybody funny, now you funny too"