Congress' chief scorekeeper said Thursday that the deal President Obama reached with Congress actually will lead to only $20 billion to $25 billion less in spending over the next five years — far short of the $37.7 billion leaders had claimed.
Congress sent President Barack Obama hard-fought legislation cutting a record $38 billion from domestic spending on Thursday, bestowing bipartisan support on the first major compromise between the White House and newly empowered Republicans in Congress.
President Obama released his "serious" budget plan this week in a pathetic attempt to keep up with House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican. Mr. Ryan released a Congressional Budget Office-scored, serious and tax-hike-free budget plan last week. By contrast, Mr. Obama has introduced a sketchy budget full of little more than tax increases.
Crossing the finish line more than six months late, Congress on Thursday finally cleared a spending bill to fund government through the rest of the fiscal year, approving a hard-fought compromise that left neither side happy and that presaged more bruising fights ahead on deficit reduction.
They don't want to undermine the work of their congressional allies, but leading conservatives and Republican presidential hopefuls are already voicing their displeasure with the spending-cut and budget deals taking shape on Capitol Hill.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, investigating whether an undercover federal operation contributed to the slaying of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, said Thursday the ATF instructed an Arizona gun dealer to engage in "suspicious sales" despite the dealer's concerns that the weapons could "end up south of the border."
The Republican Party has a government "shutdown" phobia. It has once again flinched and now tries to spin it as a victory.
The head of the Los Angeles Police Department's intelligence and special operations unit said the federal government's efforts to share intelligence with state and local law enforcement agencies needs to be improved.
Despite efforts to strip government funding for public broadcasting, PBS chief Paula Kerger said the federal budget deal retains most of the money that President Barack Obama had set aside for public television and radio stations.
