Budget agreement adds money for defence, infrastructure

Key aspects of the proposed budget agreement that covers the current fiscal year and the next.

• Eliminates automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration, for defense and non-defense programs, and provides for spending increases for priorities in both categories.

• Significantly increases spending for non-defense programs by $131 billion over the current and coming fiscal year.

• Significantly increases spending for defense programs by $165 billion over two years.

• Suspends the government's cap on borrowing, or debt limit, through March 2019, eliminating the looming threat of a marketrattling default on U.S. obligations.

• Provides almost $90 billion in disaster relief, mostly for hurricane-hit Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.

• Creates new congressional panels to come up with a legislative fix for millions of pensioners facing cuts to their benefits and to reform the congressional budget process.

• Extends the Children's Health Insurance Plan for 10 years, up from six years under a previous agreement.

• Extends funding for community health centers serving the poor for two years.

• Includes an additional $6 billion for fighting opioid addiction and boosting mental health services, $4 billion to improve health care for veterans, $20 billion for infrastructure improvements and $2 billion to support additional research at the National Institutes of Health.

• Extends dozens of expired tax breaks for economic development, energy production, and other odds and ends.

• Extends numerous technical provisions related to health care, Medicare, and Medicaid.

• Provides additional funding for constituent services at the Social Security Administration and for the Internal Revenue Service, which is implementing the new tax-cut law.