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Senate announces US funding, debt deal

Reid, McConnell announce plan that would fund government through January 15, averting a threatened default following 16-day closure. House expected to approve measure

Senate leaders announced a bipartisan deal Wednesday to avert a threatened US default and reopen the federal government after a 16-day closure, a move intended to end a prolonged fiscal crisis that gripped Washington, battered Republican approval ratings and threatened the global economy with a new recession. Congress was gearing up to pass the measure before the day was out.

 

Republican leaders in the US House of Representatives have set a meeting for 3 pm (1900 GMT) on Wednesday to brief their members about the Senate's newly minted bipartisan deal.

 

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The meeting is likely to be raucous since it does not contain demands by House Republicans to rollback President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul. Regardless, the House is expected to approve the measure later in the day with mostly Democratic votes, aides said.

 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced a plan that would fund the government through Jan. 15 and allow the Treasury to increase the nation's borrowing authority through Feb. 7. Both the Democrat-controlled Senate and Republican-controlled House of Representatives must approve the plan, which President Barack Obama would then sign before Thursday's deadline for Congress to increase the federal debt limit.

 

Obama applauded the Senate compromise and hoped to sign it into law, the White House said in statement.

 

US stock indexes jumped by more than 1 percent by late morning on news of a deal.

 

Reid, leader of Senate Democrats, thanked McConnell for working with him to end what had become one of the nastiest partisan stand-offs in recent Washington history.

 

"This is a time for reconciliation," said Reid.

 

McConnell said the time had come to back away for now from Republican efforts to gut Obama's Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But the feisty minority boss said Republicans had not given up on erasing the plan from the legislative books.

 

The crisis began on Oct. 1 with a partial shutdown of the federal government after House Republicans refused to accept a temporary funding measure unless Obama agreed to defund or delay his health care overhaul law.

 

It escalated when House Republicans also refused to move on needed approval for raising the amount of money the Treasury can borrow to pay US bills, raising the specter of a catastrophic default. Obama vowed repeatedly not to pay a "ransom" in order to get Congress to pass normally routine legislation.

 

The hard-right tea party faction of House Republicans, urged on by conservative Texas Republican Ted Cruz in the Senate, had seen both deadlines as weapons that could be used to gut Obama's health care overhaul, designed to provide tens of millions of uninsured Americans with coverage. The Democrats remained united against any Republican threat to Obama's signature program, and Republicans in the House could not muster enough votes to pass their own plan to end the impasse.

 

The shutdown, the first in 17 years, has furloughed more than 400,000 federal workers.

 

AP and Reuters contributed to this report

 

 

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פרסום ראשון: 10.16.13, 20:35
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