The good news: Congress has passed a relatively painless omnibus appropriations bill for the first time in several years, avoiding a shutdown and providing some long-needed stability to planning.

     The not-so-good news: While many departments and programs are finally getting an increase in appropriations, it is only a partial restoration of what the sequester took away. The overall trend is slightly down.

     The new federal budget is still $21 billion below the sequester level of fiscal 2013 and $85 billion below the fiscal pre-sequestration enacted level, according to a chart distributed by the House Appropriations Committee (http://goo.gl/j30fR0.)

     If sequestration had continued, the cuts this year would have been an additional $45 billion deeper, according to Reuters.

     As it is, the fiscal 2014 appropriations bill meets the caps set under the budget agreement negotiated by Senate Budget Committee chair Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and her House counterpart Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) in December 2013.

     Following that deal, lawmakers negotiated the $1.1 trillion discretionary budget package for fiscal 2014. The House passed the bill in a 359-67 vote on Jan. 15, while the Senate voted 72 to 26 a day later. President Obama signed the bill into law on Jan. 17.

     The 1500-page-plus spending law to fund all federal departments averts another shutdown and avoids additional cuts that were to have kicked in this year under continued sequestration.

     It hikes funding for selected programs such as Head Start, cybersecurity and the FBI, but it also cuts many programs including the Small Business Administration and tax assistance at the IRS.

     Nearly all Democrats, along with 166 Republicans in the House and 17 in the Senate, voted in favor of the appropriations bill and the budget agreement. The bipartisan deal led some lawmakers to speculate that the days of political obstructionism over the budget may be over, at least for now.

     "We can avoid drama politics, with cliffhangers and fiscal cliffs, we could avoid shutdowns, we can avoid government on autopilot.” Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told the Wall Street Journal.

     One of the GOP lawmakers who voted “yes” for the deal, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, seemed to agree. "It is certainly far better than the alternative, which would be another confrontation, another government shutdown, and another giant step further away from establishing some sense of regular order,” Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate appropriations panel, told McClatchy newspapers.

     However, several prominent conservative Republicans voted against the budget package, including Sens. Ted Cruz, R-TX; Mitch McConnell, R-KY; Marco Rubio, R-FL; and Rand Paul, R-KY.

     Their opposition may forecast another round of difficulties over the raising of the nation’s debt limit, which Obama administration officials have said could be needed as early as February.

     While Congress has raised the debt limit dozens of times without much debate in past years, during the Obama administration, conservative GOP lawmakers and Tea Party leaders have attempted to use approving an increase in the debt limit as leverage to obtain further cuts to the federal budget.

     As of last week, Senate Republicans were planning to link raising the debt limit to a new round of spending cuts, according to the National Journal.

More information:
National Journal article http://goo.gl/iq4U56
Reuters article http://goo.gl/2INJiy
Set-Aside Alert http://goo.gl/MDnHq9