According to CNN, US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Mike Johnson are close to reaching an agreement on government funding levels ahead of a government budget deadline later in January.

Aides to Schumer and Johnson had been working on a deal for weeks, including discussing possible expenditure cutbacks, according to the story, which cited congressional sources.

According to the sources, House Republicans want to recapture unspent COVID-19 money and slash Internal Revenue Service spending.

The US Congress enacted a so-called "laddered" government financing legislation in November.

As per the bill, programs such as transport and energy will receive funding until January 19, while other sectors will receive funding by February 2.

Congress has until January 19 to avoid a partial government shutdown and finance sectors such as veterans' affairs and agriculture. Legislators have until February 2 to fund departments such as the Defense Department, Homeland Security, and Labor.

If legislators are unable to negotiate a full-year budget agreement, the US Congress may enact further temporary measures to prolong existing funding and avert a government shutdown.

In mid-December, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned that 2024 would pose significant challenges if the US Congress does not endorse new military aid for Ukraine.

"I think 2024 will be a very difficult year if we are not able to get the assistance to Ukraine," Sullivan told the WSJ CEO Council.

Sullivan cautioned that the inability of Congress to endorse President Joe Biden's national security supplemental request would greatly impact Ukraine's ability to both maintain and reclaim territory from Russian forces.

US Gov't wasted $900 bln in 2023 due to incompetence: Paul

According to US Senator Rand Paul, the United States wasted $900 billion in 2023 on a range of projects that highlight the government's ineptitude and wasteful expenditure.

In his annual Festivus Report last month, Paul described that "No matter how much money the government has already wasted, politicians keep demanding even more," while US taxpayers are compelled to pay the price for Congress' expenditures on favored companies and pet projects.

Paul detailed a $2.7 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant was sub-granted to Russian researchers who researched cats' capacity to walk on treadmills. Mississippi researchers also utilized NIH grants to study the effects of methamphetamine on monkey sleep patterns.

Furthermore, according to Paul, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases spent $477,121 in taxpayer cash to examine the vulnerability of forcefully feminized monkeys to HIV.

According to Paul, the US national debt would increase by an estimated $2 trillion each year for the next decade, amounting to more than $5 billion every day or $60,000 per second.