High-ranking Republican members of the Senate said late Monday that a deal has been reached to postpone the mandatory spending cuts referred to as sequestration for two months while an alternative is negotiated.
GOP members saw more than half a trillion dollars in cuts to the military budget as being potentially devastating, and now will need to find alternative cuts, as well as how to pay for the $24 billion cost of delaying them, reported The Hill.
“Sequestration will not be implemented for two months,” said Sen. John McCain, adding that the deal has still to be finalized because senators were still discussing how to cover the cost of the delay without adding to the deficit. “They haven’t ironed that out yet,” he said.
McCain's fellow Arizonan, Sen. John Kyl, said negotiators also were working on a part of the bill to freeze Medicare payments to doctors while finalizing the deal, which still also must be approved by President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
McConnell already had been telling colleagues that the deal was done.
“While there hasn’t been an absolute final sign-off on all of those offsets, the parties that have been doing the negotiating feel confident that they have a notional agreement,” Kyl said.
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