Although this article was posted on November 5, it apparently written before October 29. To bring you up-to-date, the law was passed by Congress and signed into law since then. Otherwise this article provides a summary of the main features of the budget that just passed and signed into law.
The basic deal increases the federal budget by $80 billion for the next two years, $50 billion in the first year and $30 billion in the second year. About half of the increase is earmarked only for the Pentagon, the remainder for unspecified “discretionary spending.” Those increases come at the cost of massive cuts to Medicare and Social Security payments to workers with disabilities (SSDI). The deal also includes additional funding of $32 billion dollars in the “Overseas Contingency Operations Fund” (OCO), to fund the ongoing U.S. imperialist aggression against Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
