Prospects brighten for small-scale budget deal

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Prospects brighten for small-scale budget deal

AP foreign, Tuesday November 26 2013

ANDREW TAYLOR

Associated Press= WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite the poisonous environment in Congress, chances are improving for a small-scale budget deal next month that would ease automatic spending decreases that threaten to cut more deeply into domestic programs and military priorities in 2014.

Neither party will get its biggest priority — for Democrats, higher taxes; for Republicans, slowing the exploding cost of retirement programs. But a mutual desire to avert another government shutdown sets the stage for splitting the $91 billion difference between what Senate Democrats and House Republicans want to spend next year on operating budgets of the Pentagon and domestic agencies.

Any deal reached by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and his counterpart in the Senate, Patty Murray, could still be rejected by their colleagues. But both profess optimism while working hard to minimize potentially damaging leaks that could derail their efforts. Murray, D-Wash., plans to return to the Capitol the week after Thanksgiving to continue behind-closed-door negotiations even though the Senate will remain on recess.

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Democratic and GOP aides familiar with the talks report progress but say there is no agreement yet. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to talk publicly about the negotiations.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/feedarticle/11083607

[PoliticAverse]

1. "Democrats have taken curbs in Social Security cost-of-living increases ... off the table"

"Democrats have taken curbs in Social Security cost-of-living increases and higher Medicare premiums on upper-income beneficiaries off the table"

[RBInMaine]

2. The AP is an infected pile of monkey spunk. Note what they say here:

Last edited Tue Nov 26, 2013, 08:12 AM - Edit history (1)

"The Democrats want tax hikes. The Republicans want to curb the exploding cost of retirement programs."

What a fucking scumbag corporate TeaBag toady piece of right wing propaganda RAT SHIT the AP is. Their "reports" should should be used as toilet paper.

YES, fuckface AP, we want to raise taxes on the RICH and CORPORATIONS who are millionaires and billionaires and can more than afford it, and we want to reduce the bloated wasteful military and its industrial complex with all its no-bid contracts, and we want to end rotten corporate tax subsidies, tax writeoffs, and tax havens all for the rich. And we want to invest in American jobs and infrastructure. In other words, we want to do what the large majority wants their Congress to do.