“Bipartisan negotiators announced on Tuesday a deal on the U.S. federal budget that — despite modest spending cuts — hopes to end the three-year-long impasse which led to sequestration,” Devex reports. “At this stage and while details of the budget proposal are still being unveiled, … [s]upporters of the bill … seem confident to have eluded the devastating effects that a government shutdown would have meant for the already depleted foreign affairs budget, where foreign aid and USAID programs would have been an easy target for lawmakers trying to save costs” (Santamaria, 12/11). “Passage of the agreement in the House before the chamber recesses on Friday for the year would all but guarantee the same in the Senate, probably next week,” Reuters reports (Lawder et al., 12/11).