The compromise, if it can be agreed upon and enacted, would raise the government’s borrowing limit for two years, past the 2024 election, according to three people familiar with it who insisted on anonymity to discuss a plan that was still being hammered out.
The United States hit the legal limit, currently $31.4 trillion, in January and has been relying on accounting measures to avoid defaulting since then. The Treasury Department has projected it will exhaust its ability to pay bills on time as early as June 1.
In exchange for lifting the debt limit, the deal would meet Republicans’ demand to cut some federal spending, albeit with the help of accounting maneuvers that would give both sides political cover for an agreement likely to be unpopular with large swaths of their base voters.
It would impose caps on discretionary spending for two years, though those caps would apply differently to spending on the military than to nondefense discretionary spending. Spending on the military would grow next year, as would spending on some veterans’ care that falls under nondefense discretionary spending. The rest of nondefense discretionary spending would fall slightly — or roughly stay flat — compared with this year’s levels.
The deal would also roll back $10 billion of the $80 billion Congress approved last year for an I.R.S. crackdown on high earners and corporations that evade taxes, though that provision was still under discussion. Democrats have championed the initiative, and nonpartisan scorekeepers have said the funding would reduce the budget deficit by helping the government collect more of the tax revenue it is owed. But Republicans have denounced it, claiming falsely that the money would be used to fund an army of auditors to go after working people.