Tom Cohen, Ben Brumfield and Greg Botelho
CNN
Oct. 16, 2013

[Breaking news update 12:20 p.m. ET]

Senate leaders announced on Wednesday that they have reached a deal to end the government shutdown and avoid a possible U.S. default.

[Original story moved at 11:45 a.m. ET]

Senate leaders on Wednesday worked out a deal to reopen the government and avoid a potential U.S. default as soon as midnight, sources told CNN’s Dana Bash and Ted Barrett.

Formal announcement of the agreement will come at 12 noon ET on the Senate floor, a Republican Senate aide told Bash.

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Senate leaders announce agreement to end shutdown, raise debt

Seth McLaughlin and Stephen Dinan
Washington Times
Oct. 16, 2013

Top senators struck a deal Wednesday to reopen the government and extend the federal government’s borrowing authority into next year and both sides of the Capitol are hoping for quick action to reassure nervous financial markets eyeing a Thursday deadline set by the Treasury Department.

“The compromise we reached will provide our economy with the stability it desperately needs,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said after he and his GOP counterpart, Sen. Mitch McConnell, struck the deal.

For Republicans, the deal was more about getting an embarrassing couple of weeks behind them than in being able to claim victory in a deal that they felt compelled to make.

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White House: ‘There are no winners here’

Jennifer Epstein
Politico
Oct. 16, 2013

While Democrats are being cast as the early winners in the deal to end the government shutdown and raise the debt limit, the White House doesn’t see itself as the victor.

“There are no winners here,” press secretary Jay Carney said at his daily briefing Wednesday. “We said that from the beginning, and we’re going to say it right up to the end because it’s true. The American people have paid a price for this.”

Earlier this month, a senior administration official told the Wall Street Journal that “we are winning” with a drawn-out shutdown, but the White House pushed back on that quote in much the same way that Carney did on Wednesday.

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