Avoiding the Budgetary Guillotine: Senate and House to Start Negotiations for 2 Year Budget Deal, Seeking to Avert Automatic Cuts

ANCOR is sharing this article by Politico because Congressional budget negotiations have implications for the stability of all federal programs, including those that support people with intellectual / developmental disabilities (I/DD).

As shared by Politico:

“Congressional leaders are charging ahead with negotiations on a deal to skirt $126 billion in spending cuts, even as an internal divide among House Democrats killed their bill staking an opening offer. But the Trump administration is reluctant.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday afternoon that he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had agreed to begin negotiating a new two-year deal to raise budget caps, starting with discussions among congressional staff. The announcement dovetailed with news that House Democrats had called off a Wednesday vote on a bill that would raise budget limits for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 and the fiscal year that follows.

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The majority leader said there is a “bipartisan desire” to avoid another stopgap spending bill that simply extends funding at current levels and to avoid the automatic cuts if Congress fails to raise the budget caps.

A senior administration official said Tuesday, however, that Trump is content with the cuts that would be exacted without a grand budget deal. […]

Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget proposed increasing the balance in a special war account that does not count against the budget caps, which would mean non-defense funding would fall victim to the automatic cuts while defense spending would be preserved. But congressional Democrats will not sign off on such a move, requiring an overall budget deal if the president wants to spare the Pentagon from the scalpel of sequestration.”