US Senate Passes 2-Year Budget Deal

The United States Senate passed a two-year budget deal to ease automatic spending cuts and decrease the risk of another government shutdown, Reuters reports. Now the focus shifts to a spending measure Congress must pass by Jan. 15.

The vote by a simple majority pushes the measure to President Obama. The Senate and House of Representatives Appropriations committees must come up with a $1.012 trillion fiscal 2014 spending bill to implement the budget deal before spending authority expires, according to Reuters.