Debt Ceiling Deal Vote Squeaky
The US Debt Ceiling Agreement narrowly passed the Senate, averting a catastrophic federal default. Just days before the June 5 default deadline, President Joe Biden said he would sign the bill as soon as it hit his desk.
< span class="article__picture-author" itemprop="author">Photo: pixabay.com
The U.S. Senate narrowly passed a debt ceiling suspension bill Thursday night, sending the bill to Joe Biden's desk and preventing a federal default that could hurt the U.S. economy and global markets, writes The Guardian.
The final vote was 63 to 36, with 46 Democrats and 17 Republicans supporting the bill, while five Democrats and 31 Republicans opposed the legislation. Sixty votes were required to pass the bill.
“Today's vote is a good result because the Democrats have done a very good job removing the worst parts of the Republican plan from consideration,” Senate Majority Leader Democrat Chuck Schumer said after the vote. “And that's why Democrats voted overwhelmingly in favor of this bill, while Republicans in the Senate certainly didn't.”
Biden hailed the Senate's achievement and promised to sign the bill as soon as it gets to him on table, just a few days before the June 5th default deadline.
“Senators from both parties voted tonight to defend our hard-won economic progress and prevent the United States from defaulting for the first time in history,” Biden said in a statement. “Our work is far from over, but this agreement is an important step forward and a reminder of what is possible when we act in the best interests of our country.”
The Senate vote comes a day after the House of Representatives passed the debt cap bill in a resounding bipartisan vote of 314 to 117. The bill, which was negotiated between Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, suspends the government's borrowing limit until January 2025, ensuring the issue doesn't resurface until the next presidential election.
The final vote in the Senate on the bill ended a long day in the upper house, where lawmakers spent hours considering amendments to legislation. All 11 proposed amendments did not receive sufficient support to be included in the main bill.
Several amendments were introduced by Republicans in the Senate, who expressed concern that the debt ceiling bill passed by the House of Representatives did too little to contain government spending.
As part of the bill's negotiations, Speaker Kevin McCarthy successfully secured modest cuts in government spending and changes to work requirements for supplementary feeding and temporary assistance programs for families in need. The changes were deemed insufficient by 31 Republican senators, who echoed the criticism voiced by 71 House Republicans who opposed the bill the day before.
“This doesn't go far enough. It doesn't do the basic things it claims to do, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee said in an interview with Fox News Thursday morning. “Case after case, the cuts he proposes don’t materialize.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, supported the bill, although he acknowledged that lawmakers must take further action to address the federal government's more than $31 trillion debt problem.
“The Fiscal Liability Act avoids the catastrophic consequences of defaulting on our nation's debt,” McConnell said. The deal passed by the House of Representatives last night is a promising step towards fiscal sanity. But make no mistake: there is much more work to be done. The fight to cut wasteful public spending is far from over.”
While some of their colleagues lamented the state of the US debt, war hawks at the Republican Senate conference warned that the legislation underfunded the Pentagon, leaving the US military is vulnerable to external threats.
Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell attempted to allay these fears by entering a statement on the record confirming that America is ready to “respond to ongoing and growing threats to national security.”
“This debt ceiling agreement does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to allocate emergency additional funds to ensure that our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries,” the joint statement said. “The Senate is not about to ignore our national needs or abandon our friends and allies who face urgent threats from America's most dangerous adversaries.”