The U.S. Congress appears headed toward approval of a $1.1 trillion 2014 spending plan that would avert another government shutdown like the one that occurred last October.The House of Representatives plans to vote Wednesday on the budget, with the Senate following later in the week. The spending plan — nearly 1,600 pages long — is a political compromise between fractious Republican and Democratic lawmakers that covers funding for a vast array of government programs. It includes money for U.S. President Barack Obama's signature health care reforms and American military operations in Afghanistan. The plan heads off automatic spending cuts to a variety of defense and domestic programs that would have been triggered by a 2011 law that curtailed funding when the lawmakers could not agree with the White House on a budget.Even as the spending plan neared passage, Republican lawmakers remained locked in a dispute with Mr. Obama, a Democrat, over his call to extend unemployment benefits to the long-term jobless. That program expired at the end of last month.Efforts to extend the benefits stalled in the Senate late Tuesday and lawmakers now may not return to the issue again until late January.In recent speeches, Mr. Obama has focused on ways to boost the country's labor market and cut the growing divide between the wealthiest Americans and everyday workers. He is visiting the Atlantic coast state of North Carolina on Wednesday to unveil a new plan to promote manufacturing innovation for next generation electronics. The country's jobless rate fell in December to 6.7 percent — more than a five-year low. But the figure largely dropped because many people without jobs have stopped looking for work, and thus are not counted in the government's calculation of the unemployment rate. [Read More]

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Source: VOA News: Economy and Finance