By DAVID ESPO
AP Special Correspondent
WASHINGTON – Congress sent President Barack Obama hard-fought legislation cutting a record $38 billion from federal spending on Thursday, bestowing bipartisan support on the first major compromise between the White House and newly empowered Republicans in Congress.
“Welcome to divided government,” said House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, Republican point man in tough negotiations with the president and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that produced a bill no one claimed to like in its entirety.
Leader of a rambunctious new majority, Boehner said the cuts in domestic programs were unprecedented. Yet he also called the measure a less-than-perfect first step in a long campaign against federal red ink, and dozens of rank-and-file conservatives voted against it.