US lawmakers in the lower House of Representatives approved on Thursday a compromise budget deal that will avert a costly government shutdown and minimise damage from across the board spending cuts.
The chamber approved the bipartisan measure 332—94.
The measure was seen as imperfect by both Democrats and Republicans, but would fund the government for the next two years in a bid to avoid the partisan gridlock that prompted a government shutdown in October.
The measure hashed out by negotiators from the House and the upper Senate must now be approved by Senate before President Barack Obama can sign it into law.
Lawmakers from both parties said they saw the measure as an imperfect compromise that left many crucial fiscal challenges unresolved, but it passed with strong support from Democrats and Republicans.
“This agreement is better than the alternative, but it misses a huge opportunity to do what this country expects us to do and that is put this nation on a fiscally sustainable path,” Democrat Steny Hoyer said before the vote.
Criticism of budget deal
Many conservative Republicans had expressed concern that the budget increases spending too much and institutes too many fees, while liberal Democrats were upset it does not extend benefits for the long-term unemployed.
Some of the harshest criticism of the deal came from conservative activist groups and the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, prompting an unusual backlash from Speaker of the House John Boehner, the top Republican in the chamber.
“Our job is to find enough common ground to move the ball down the field on behalf of the American people who sent us here to do their work,” he told reporters earlier on Thursday.
Boehner also challenged the credibility of outside conservative groups and think tanks who criticised an agreement “they’ve never seen.” Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, who along with Democratic Senator Patty Murray led the group that crafted the deal, acknowledged it was not ideal, but urged members of his party to back it.
He said it did “not go near as far as we want to go, but at least going in the direction that we want to go” on reducing deficits.
In order to have a real impact, he said, Republicans would have to win some elections and must now work within the divided government that is in power.
The proposal sets discretionary spending at just over $1 trillion for the 2014 and 2015 budget years. In 2014, discretionary spending would be $520.5 billion for defence and $491.8 billion for non-defence spending. Much of government spending is consumed by other non-discretionary spending, such as healthcare programmes for the poor and elderly and payouts to pensioners.
The deal would ease the automatic across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester by $63 billion, while making $85 billion in cuts elsewhere and reducing the deficit by $23 billion.
Failure to come to an agreement on a budget earlier this year had caused much of the government to shut down for 16 days in October, halting services and fuelling economic uncertainty.