That budget measure -- a kind of fiscal doomsday device called sequestration -- was extended for two months this year already.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The White House budget office noted in September that sequestration was designed during the 2011 standoff over raising the federal debt ceiling as "a mechanism to force Congress to act on further deficit reduction" -- a kind of doomsday device that was never meant to be triggered.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS