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Trump signs two-year budget deal to boost spending

By IANS | Updated: August 3, 2019 07:45 IST

US President Donald Trump on Friday signed the "Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019," which boosts discretionary spending limits and suspends the public debt limit for the next two years.

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The budget deal, reached between the President and congressional leaders earlier, was passed 67-28 in the US Senate on Thursday, and was approved by the House by 284-149 last week, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The deal suspends the federal debt ceiling until July 31, 2021, and raise overall spending levels by $320 billion above the limits set in the Budget Control Act of 2011, which established strict spending caps and stipulated automatic across-the-board spending cuts.

It will lift the budget cap for discretionary spending to $1.37 trillion in 2020 and $1.375 trillion in 2021, expanding defence outlays, demanded by Republicans, and boosting domestic spending, including health care for veterans, sought by Democrats.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan watchdog group, lashed out at lawmakers in a statement Thursday, saying the Senate vote "caps a shameful period of fiscal recklessness in Washington that is unprecedented in the context of our current fiscal state."

Congress and the President have added $4.1 trillion to the debt since President Trump took office, MacGuineas said. "As a result, deficits are more than double what they would have been without fiscally irresponsible tax cuts and spending increases."

The White House has projected a 1-trillion-dollar budget deficit for the fiscal year 2019, the highest since 2012, Office of Management and Budget said in its recently released Mid-Session Review.

The debt ceiling was previously set at $20.5 trillion, and expired on March 1 this year. Since then, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has urged congressional leaders to raise the federal debt limit as the Treasury Department began accounting maneuvers to avoid a default.

( With inputs from IANS )

Tags: Maya MacguineasUs SenateWhite HouseResponsible Federal BudgetTreasury Department
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