Washington negotiators are closing in on a budget and debt deal that would stave off the chance of a government shutdown this fall and allow Congress to speed through legislation to increase the government's borrowing cap.
The emerging two-year framework would satisfy demands for an outline to guide congressional work on more than $1.3 trillion in agency operating budgets. It would still need to be fleshed out in further negotiations, and puts off battles over political land mines like immigration and President Donald Trump's unfulfilled promises of a border wall.
The chief advocates of the deal include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., along with top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York. Many House conservatives are likely to oppose it as spending too much on Democratic domestic initiatives and ignoring budget deficits estimated at $1 trillion. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, focused chiefly on the need to increase the debt limit, is the chief negotiator for the Trump administration.
Pelosi and Schumer spoke with Mnuchin on Wednesday, and the talks have gotten down to timing issues. Pelosi told reporters that "if we're really going to do this by next Thursday before we leave we have to have some agreement this week."
"I am genuinely optimistic," said House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., a key Pelosi ally who is keeping a close watch on the talks.
Also driving the negotiations is the threat of cuts averaging 10% to agency accounts, reversing recent gains for the Pentagon and hard-won increases in domestic programs favored by Democrats. Those cuts are the final leftovers of a failed 2011 budget and debt deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama and then-Speaker John Boehner that used the threat of the automatic cuts to try to prompt additional progress on the deficit. Instead, lawmakers have acted three times to stop the cuts.
The talks have so far been insulated from Washington's ongoing maelstrom and the already raging presidential campaign. It is not a done deal yet. Both sides worry that Trump could still reject it. But the forces aligned in the talks are powerful and all sides want to deal with the politically toxic debt limit issue without a high-wire act that could cause markets to shudder. Failure to increase the government's $22 trillion debt cap would spark an unprecedented crisis in which the government couldn't borrow enough cash to pay all of its bills.
The talks have been going for weeks, but took on new urgency as deficit estimates worsened, creating an unacceptable risk of default in early-to-mid September. At the same time, the Senate Appropriations Committee, stacked with loyalists to McConnell, is aching to start advancing its 12 annual spending bills. The House has passed most of its bills using significantly higher spending figures than what it's likely to end up with under the emerging agreement. Each has been slapped with a Trump veto threat.
Among the loose ends, and they could be significant, is the issue of how much in accompanying spending cuts should be paired with the short-term spending increases. Past deals have had these so-called offsets, often relying on quick moneymakers like sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or extending small cuts to Medicare providers, but only $60 billion or so is available now.
While Democrats sound optimistic, some GOP factions are dreading the deal, which melds a toxic mix of debt, spending and $1 trillion-plus budget deficits for conservatives to digest. Republicans warn that Trump won't sign anything that doesn't enjoy widespread GOP support, but the alternative is to run the government on auto-pilot, a prospect that alarms the Pentagon and its allies.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian court on Friday ordered the detention of the country’s farm minister in the latest high-profile corruption investigation, while Kyiv security officials assessed how they can recover lost battlefield momentum in the war against Russia.
Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled that Agriculture Minister Oleksandr Solskyi should be held in custody for 60 days, but he was released after paying bail of 75 million hryvnias ($1.77 million), a statement said.
Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau suspects Solskyi headed an organized crime group that between 2017 and 2021 unlawfully obtained land worth 291 million hryvnias ($6.85 million) and attempted to obtain other land worth 190 million hryvnias ($4.47 million).
Ukraine is trying to root out corruption that has long dogged the country. A dragnet over the past two years has seen Ukraine’s defense minister, top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials lose their jobs.
That has caused embarrassment and unease as Ukraine receives tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid to help fight Russia’s army, and the European Union and NATO have demanded widespread anti-graft measures before Kyiv can realize its ambition of joining the blocs.
In Ukraine's capital, doctors and ambulance crews evacuated patients from a children’s hospital on Friday after a video circulated online saying Russia planned to attack it.
Parents hefting bags of clothes, toys and food carried toddlers and led young children from the Kyiv City Children’s Hospital No. 1 on the outskirts of the city. Medics helped them into a fleet of waiting ambulances to be transported to other facilities.
In the video, a security official from Russian ally Belarus alleged that military personnel were based in the hospital. Kyiv city authorities said that the claim was “a lie and provocation.”
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that civic authorities were awaiting an assessment from security services before deciding when it was safe to reopen the hospital.
“We cannot risk the lives of our children,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to hold online talks Friday with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which has been the key international organization coordinating the delivery of weapons and other aid to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said late Thursday that the meeting would discuss how to turn around Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield. The Kremlin’s forces have gained an edge over Kyiv’s army in recent months as Ukraine grappled with a shortage of ammunition and troops.
Russia, despite sustaining high losses, has been taking control of small settlements as part of its effort to drive deeper into eastern Ukraine after capturing the city of Avdiivka in February, the U.K. defense ministry said Friday.
It’s been slow going for the Kremlin’s troops in eastern Ukraine and is likely to stay that way, according to the Institute for the Study of War. However, the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar is vulnerable to the Russian onslaught, which is using glide bombs — powerful Soviet-era weapons that were originally unguided but have been retrofitted with a navigational targeting system — that obliterate targets.
“Russian forces do pose a credible threat of seizing Chasiv Yar, although they may not be able to do so rapidly,” the Washington-based think tank said late Thursday.
It added that Russian commanders are likely seeking to advance as much as possible before the arrival in the coming weeks and months of new U.S. military aid, which was held up for six months by political differences in Congress.
While that U.S. help wasn’t forthcoming, Ukraine’s European partners didn’t pick up the slack, according to German’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks Ukraine support.
“The European aid in recent months is nowhere near enough to fill the gap left by the lack of U.S. assistance, particularly in the area of ammunition and artillery shells,” it said in a report Thursday.
Ukraine is making a broad effort to take back the initiative in the war after more than two years of fighting. It plans to manufacture more of its own weapons in the future, and is clamping down on young people avoiding conscription, though it will take time to process and train any new recruits.
Jill Lawless contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Ukrainian young acting student Gleb Batonskiy plays piano in a public park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
