Republican and Democratic leaders have agreed on a plan to fund the government for the first six months of fiscal 2013. Still left to debate: whether to extend the so-called Bush tax cuts and looming, deep automatic cuts in some spending.

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced on Tuesday an agreement to avoid a government shutdown shortly before the November election," The Hill writes. "He said he, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and President Obama have all agreed to the deal."

Boehner confirmed the news in an email his staff just sent to reporters:

"Leader Reid and I have reached an agreement by which the House and Senate will approve a six-month continuing resolution in September to keep the government operating into next year. During the August district work period, committee members and their staff will write legislation that can be passed by the House and Senate in September and sent to President Obama to be signed into law."

According to The Hill, "the government will be funded at $1.047 trillion, the top-line spending level for 2012."

As The Washington Post previously reported, "a six-month resolution, which would expire at the end of March, would remove the basic discussion about keeping the government running from a much broader December fiscal debate about how to handle expiring tax cuts and deep automatic spending reductions set to take effect in January."

Basically, as The Associated Press has previously explained, the deal piles a "stack of unfinished business into the lap of the next Congress and whoever wins the White House in November." But the lame duck session between the election and January will still include "dealing with expiring tax cuts and looming across-the-board cuts to the Pentagon and a variety of domestic programs."

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