WASHINGTON — House and Senate negotiators reached accord on a trillion-dollar spending plan that will finance the government through September, reversing some cuts to military veterans’ pensions that were included in a broader budget agreement last month and defeating efforts to rein in President Obama’s health care law.

The hefty bill, filed in the House on Monday night, neutralized almost all of the 134 policy provisions that House Republicans had hoped to include, with negotiators opting for cooperation over confrontation after the 16-day government shutdown in October.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/us/politics/house-and-senate-negotiators-agree-on-spending-bill.html

President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans are dug in on the sequester, and there are no signs of a quick fix to the $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts that both sides say they disdain.

That could certainly change after a few bad months of economic numbers or a public outcry. But until average Americans feel the cuts, neither side looks willing to budge on the key issue of revenues without some game-changing factor. And neither party is inclined to risk a government shutdown on sequester politics.

“I don’t think anyone quite understands how the sequester is really going to work,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) conceded in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

House Approves Sandy Aid, Senate Votes Next
Victims of Hurricane Sandy are one step closer to getting a major infusion of federal disaster aid. Tuesday night, the House approved a $50 billion assistance package. This type of funding has typically been noncontroversial. But the Sandy aid has been a battle.

More than 10 weeks after Superstorm Sandy brutalized parts of the heavily populated Northeast, the House approved $50.7 billion in emergency relief for the victims Tuesday night as Republican leaders struggled to close out an episode that exposed painful party divisions inside Congress and out.

The vote was 241-180, and officials said the Senate was likely to accept the measure early next week and send it to President Barack Obama for his signature. Democrats supported the aid in large numbers, while majority Republicans opposed it by a lopsided margin.