Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013

Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013
Great Seal of the United States
Long titleMaking continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes.
NicknamesBudget bill
Enacted bythe 113th United States Congress
Citations
Public lawPub. L. 113–67 (text) (PDF)
Codification
Acts amendedBalanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, and others
Legislative history

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 (H.J.Res. 59; Pub. L. 113–67 (text) (PDF)) is a federal statute concerning spending and the budget in the United States, that was signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 26, 2013. On December 10, 2013, pursuant to the provisions of the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2014 calling for a joint budget conference to work on possible compromises, Representative Paul Ryan and Senator Patty Murray announced a compromise that they had agreed to after extended discussions between them. The law raises the sequestration caps for fiscal years 2014 and 2015, in return for extending the imposition of the caps into 2022 and 2023, and miscellaneous savings elsewhere in the budget. Overall, the bill is projected to lower the deficit by $23 billion over the long term.

In forming the deal behind the bill that was passed, Ryan and Murray explicitly avoided trying to find a "grand bargain", in which Democrats would buy into reduced entitlements spending while Republicans would agree to higher tax rates, as several past negotiations along such lines had failed.[1] Instead, in Ryan's words, negotiations sought to "focus on common ground ... to get some minimal accomplishments".[1] The deal did represent a rare example of bipartisanship during this period[2] and promised to end for a while the last-minute, crisis-driven budget battles that had consumed Congress for much of the prior three years.[3]

  1. ^ a b Montgomery, Lori (December 8, 2013). "Budget deal expected this week amounts to a cease-fire as sides move to avert a standoff". The Washington Post.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference cnn-senate was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference nyt-cons was invoked but never defined (see the help page).