President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached an agreement Saturday to raise the debt ceiling and place new restrictions on federal spending. If passed by Congress, it will end a partisan stalemate and prevent a potentially devastating national default.

The deal will not only resolve the high-octane dispute over debt and spending issues that has plagued Washington for weeks, but also enact major changes to environmental permits, work requirements for social safety net programs and enforcement. from the Internal Revenue Service.

The agreement, described as an agreement in principle that was cemented during a phone call between Biden at Camp David and McCarthy in Washington, has yet to be translated into formal legislative language before it is considered final. Details were just beginning to leak out on Saturday night, and many questions remained.

But here are some conclusions based on the information initially available.

The debt ceiling would be increased until 2025, after the next elections.

The federal government reached the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling set by law in January, but the Treasury Department has been using various accounting tricks to avoid breaching it. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said Friday that her department would run out of those measures by June 5, at which time the government would be unable to meet her obligations.

The deal struck by Biden and McCarthy would raise the debt ceiling for two years to carry it past the 2024 election, so neither would have to revisit the issue in the current term. The Republicans had originally proposed a year. Both parties are confident of winning the 2024 election and being in a stronger political position when the ceiling is reached next time.

Domestic spending would be limited, but not as much as the Republicans wanted.

McCarthy’s Republicans insisted that any increase in the debt ceiling would be conditional on spending cuts, so the deal he reached with Biden would limit certain programs to last the same two years for which the debt ceiling would be raised. . Republicans had originally sought a 10-year time frame for spending limits, but agreed to a shorter horizon.

The deal keeps non-defense spending in 2024 at about its 2023 level and increases it by 1 percent in 2025, in part by redirecting funds from other programs. Among other things, the deal would cut about $10 billion of the $80 billion Biden previously secured to help the IRS go after wealthy tax evaders, and use that money to preserve national programs that would otherwise have been cut. .

Some of the billions of dollars left over from the Covid-19 pandemic relief package that passed shortly after Biden took office would be recovered. A New York Times analysis suggests the caps will cut overall federal spending by about $650 billion over a decade, a fraction of the cuts Republicans originally sought, if spending grows at the anticipated rate of inflation after limits are removed in two years.

Defense, Social Security, Medicare and Veterans programs would be protected.

The agreement would protect the military and benefits such as Social Security and Medicare from spending cuts imposed on other parts of the government. It would also fully fund veterans’ health care, including expanded services for people exposed to toxic combustion pits.

The agreement would effectively preserve substantial increases won by the Biden administration over the past two years in areas such as Title I education funding for low-income students, child care and development block grants, government research, cancer and other priorities of the president. It would leave intact Mr. Biden’s efforts to forgive $400 billion in student loan debt over the next few decades, though that faces a challenge in the Supreme Court. But it would not include any of the tax increases on the wealthy and corporations that Biden sought in his original budget proposal.

Some recipients of government assistance would face new job requirements.

New work requirements would be imposed on some recipients of government assistance, including food stamps and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Among other things, the deal would limit how long people under 54 without children could get food stamps, though those limits would expire in 2030 unless Congress renews them. The package would also expand access to food stamps for veterans and the homeless.

Major power projects would be granted a streamlined review process.

Environmental permits for major energy projects would be simplified. A single lead agency would be tasked with developing a single review document according to a public schedule. The agreement would enact these changes without restricting the general scope of the current review process, reducing the statute of limitations, imposing barriers to filing, or removing injunctive or other judicial remedies.