House and Senate negotiators, in a rare bipartisan act, announced a budget agreement Tuesday designed to avert another economy-rattling government shutdown and to bring a dose of stability to Congress's fiscal policy-making over the next two years.
Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), who struck the deal after weeks of private talks, said it would allow more spending for domestic and defense programs in the near term, while adopting deficit-reduction measures over a decade to offset the costs.
Revenues to fund the higher spending would come from changes to federal employee and military pension programs, and higher fees for airline passengers, among other sources. An extension of long-term jobless benefits, sought by Democrats, wasn't included.
The plan is modest in scope, compared with past budget deals and to once-grand ambitions in Congress to craft a "grand bargain" to restructure the tax code and federal entitlement programs. But in a year and an institution characterized by gridlock and partisanship, lawmakers were relieved they could reach even a minimal agreement.
"In divided government, you don't always get what you want,'' said Mr. Ryan in announcing the deal.
Ms. Murray joined him in welcoming the prospect that lawmakers would steer away from a crisis-driven budget process. "We have lurched from crisis to crisis, from one cliff to the next,'' she said. "That uncertainty was devastating to our fragile economic recovery."
The deal, which goes to the House and Senate for approval in the coming days, marks a major change in the landmark 2011 budget-cutting law, which set in motion 10 years of fiscal austerity, including across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration.
The annual discretionary spending target will be raised to $1.012 trillion in 2014 and $1.014 trillion in 2015 under the accord.
The deal responds to the fears of most Democrats and some Republicans that government spending would be cut too much and too randomly under the next round of the sequester, which was slated to reduce the budget for most domestic and defense programs to $967 billion in 2014, down from $986 billion in 2013.