Bipartisan Budget Agreement Nears Final Passage

WASHINGTON (AP) — A modest, bipartisan budget agreement designed to keep Washington from lurching from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis and ease the harshest effects of automatic budget cuts is on the brink of passing the Senate.

The Senate is on track to clear the bill Wednesday afternoon for President Barack Obama's signature after a 67-33 vote Tuesday in which it easily hurdled a filibuster threshold.

The bill would restore $45 billion, half the amount scheduled to be automatically cut from the 2014 operating budgets of the Pentagon and some domestic agencies. An additional $18 billion would provide enough relief to essentially freeze spending at those levels for 2015.

The bill would barely dent deficits that are predicted to lessen in the short term but grow larger by the end of the decade.