Holiday spirit: US budget deal heads to passage

WASHINGTON (AP) — Legislation to ease chronic budget brinkmanship in the U.S. Congress and soften across-the-board spending cuts moved to the cusp of final passage Tuesday, a rare display of Senate bipartisanship.

The measure is expected to clear the Senate and go to President Barack Obama for his signature on Wednesday, marking a modest accomplishment at the end of a year punctuated by a partial government shutdown, a near-default by the U.S. Treasury and congressional gridlock on issues ranging from immigration to gun control.

All that has taken a toll on the approval ratings of both Republicans and Democrats — and Obama himself — creating anxiety across the political spectrum over next year's congressional elections.

"This bipartisan bill takes the first steps toward rebuilding our broken budget process. And hopefully, toward rebuilding our broken Congress," said Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat who negotiated the compromise with Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee last year.

The first major test of that is likely to come in February, when Congress faces a vote to raise the government's debt limit.

The Senate voted 67-33 Tuesday to send the measure toward final approval.

But the show of bipartisanship masked deep Republican misgivings about slicing military retirement benefits.

Even as the bill was advancing, Republicans vowed that the requirement for curtailing the growth in cost-of-living benefits for military retirees under age 62 wouldn't long survive. The Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin, has said the panel will review the change, estimated to trim some $6.3 billion in benefits, early next year.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, said the measure had been written hurriedly as the holidays approached and was on course to pass because "everybody's hell bent on getting out of town and not shutting down the government." And yet, he added concerning the retirement provision: "How could we have done this?"

By late afternoon, the bipartisanship had faded as Republicans ratcheted up their criticism and maneuvered for political gain. A proposal aimed at removing the retirement provision failed on a near party-line vote of 46-54. Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, who faces a difficult challenge for re-election, was the only senator to switch sides.

In a further indication of the issue's political importance, more than a dozen other Democrats announced they were backing separate legislation to restore the military retirement benefits and make up the money by closing a tax loophole on offshore corporations.

The provision related to military retirement was a relatively small part of legislation that itself was born of less-than-lofty ambitions.

The bill would ease some of the harshest cuts to agency budgets required under automatic spending curbs imposed earlier this year after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach a budget agreement. The cuts had been intended to be so onerous that they would force Washington to reach a lasting deal on government spending. But that so-called grand bargain was never reached.

Because spending would rise immediately but many of the savings would take place later in the decade, deficits would increase as a result of the measure for the current budget year and the two that follow. Over the 10-year period, the legislation measure shows a $23 billion cut in red ink — a trifle compared with the government's overall debt of more than $17 trillion and rising.

It had been clear for several days that the overall measure was headed for Senate passage, particularly after the Republican-controlled House had voted overwhelmingly last week to approve it.

The political pressure on the Republican leadership there had been to demonstrate an ability to govern effectively and begin to dissipate some of the fallout from last October's 17-day partial government shutdown. The shutdown occurred after Democrats and Republicans missed a deadline to pass a spending bill, largely because of Republican attempts to derail Obama's signature health care law.