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Cuts to Medicare and the health care law and almost $40 billion in unrequested money for overseas war-fighting operations top the agenda as congressional negotiators meet to begin ironing out a Republican budget blueprint for next year and beyond. Separate House- and Senate-passed budget plans have plenty in common. Both chambers want to use the fast-track budget process to send a measure repealing the health care law to President Barack Obama. And both call for padding war spending — it's exempt from budget limits — on new weapons and training of American forces. (4/20)

Exhibit two: Lawmakers last week overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan deal to set new formulas to calculate the way physicians and other providers are paid when they treat patients on Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled. The change ends more than a decade of legislative patches for a system that had repeatedly threatened to cut doctors’ payments. The votes faced little opposition even though the deal adds $140 billion to the deficit over 10 years. Just eight of 100 senators voted no, along with 37 of 435 House members. The measure does include a provision to shift some costs onto higher-income Medicare beneficiaries, which Republican leaders say made the deal an initial step toward a broader overhaul of entitlement programs. (Timiraos, 4/19)

Suddenly, bipartisanship has broken out on Capitol Hill. On Iran, Medicare, education and trade, Republicans and Democrats have come together to make deals, and that’s something rarely seen lately. “It’s great,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said after the Senate followed the House’s lead this past week in overwhelmingly passing a bill overhauling the Medicare payment system for doctors. “There’s just a huge pent-up demand to actually get something done, on both sides.” (Werner, 4/20)