House Speaker John Boehner's last week is a busy one.
Boehner and the three other top congressional officials—House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid—have tentatively reached a deal that would both raise the country’s borrowing authority to avert a devastating default next week and lift spending caps over the next two years.
“It is past time that we do away with the harmful, draconian sequester cuts," Reid said on the Senate floor Monday, referring to the 2011 budget caps that members of both parties are trying to subvert over the cries of some conservatives.
The House posted a draft of the agreement late Monday night. The deal isn't set in stone, so it remains unclear whether either chamber can muster the votes necessary for passage, but the talks are picking up speed ahead of the Nov. 3 deadline to raise the debt ceiling and a Dec. 11 deadline to keep the government running.
The deal would include a "clean" suspension of the debt limit a few months past the presidential election, until March 2017, and increase the spending caps by $80 billion—$50 billion in the first year and the remaining $30 billion in the second year—although the 10-year caps included in the 2011 Budget Control Act would remain in place. The additional funding would be equally divided between military and domestic spending, not counting extra cash that will be considered emergency war funding.