A House-approved bipartisan budget deal will be considered by the Senate this week. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter David Cay Johnston tells “Democracy Now!” on Monday how it replaces across-the-board spending cuts with airline fees and reductions in federal pensions while failing to extend unemployment benefits, which expire this month, to 1.3 million people.

The deal is “a big win for the Paul Ryan Republicans,” Johnston says. “The tax-avoidance techniques of billionaires, who can legally live tax free if they choose to, are not being shut down. The hedge fund and private equity managers will continue to be advantaged. And we’re going to kick 57,000 poor children out of Head Start, which means we’re going to narrow their economic futures and make all of us worse off in the future. We’re cutting a billion-and-a-half dollars from medical research to save lives. Why? Because the very richest people in America, those who have benefited most from being in this market, don’t want to pay for that kind of services.”

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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