Senate passes debt ceiling agreement

WASHINGTON — Averting a US debt default, the Senate gave final approval late Thursday. Debt ceilings and budget cut packagesspent the night working on a bipartisan agreement and submitted it to President Joe Biden’s desk to get it into law by the ever-looming deadline.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats are entirely happy with the outcome of the compromise deal negotiated between Mr. Biden and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. But after weeks of heated budget negotiations, the precarious debt ceiling has been shelved, raising risks. turn the US and global economies upside down Until 2025 after the next presidential election.

The 63-36 bipartisan approval in the Senate partly mirrored the House’s overwhelming majority tally the day before, allowing centrists in both parties to rely on the Biden-McCarthy package to pass. But Democrats led the polls in both houses.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said ahead of the vote that passing the bill means “the United States can breathe a sigh of relief.”

“We saved this country from the scourge of default,” he said afterwards.

In a statement after the vote, Mr Biden said senators from both parties “remembered that America is and will be the country that pays its bills”.

He said he will sign the bill into law as soon as possible. “No one gets everything they want in negotiations, but don’t get me wrong, this bipartisan deal is a big win for our economy and the American people,” the president said. The White House has announced it will address the nation on the issue at 7 p.m. EDT on Friday.

Rapid action was essential if Washington wanted talks Deadline next Monday, when the Treasury Department said the U.S. was starting to run out of cash to pay bills and was in danger of a catastrophic default. Raising the national debt ceiling, currently at $31.4 trillion, would allow the Treasury to borrow to pay off US debt already incurred.

After all, the debt ceiling showdown is a familiar high-stakes battle in Congress, with Mr. McCarthy taking on the far-right House Republican majority against a Democratic president in a new era of divided government in Washington. It became a battle supported by the momentum of facing each other.

McCarthy has rejected a once-regular vote to remove the country’s debt ceiling without concessions, bringing the Biden White House to the negotiating table and agreeing to a deal to force spending cuts aimed at reducing the country’s deficit. Summarized.

whole, 99 page bill It will limit spending over the next two years, suspend the debt ceiling until January 2025, and change several policies, including new levies. Labor Requirements for Older Americans Receiving Food Aid and Appalachian Natural Gas Line Gets Green Light That many Democrats are against it.

Increase and decrease funding for the Armed Forces and veterans New money for Internal Revenue Service employees And he has rejected Mr. Biden’s calls to roll back Trump-era tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy to finance the country’s deficit. If Congress does not approve the annual spending bill, it will automatically impose a 1% cut.

After the House overwhelmingly approved the bill late Wednesday, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell also said he wanted to waste no time and ensure the bill passed.

“The Senate has a chance to make that important progress a reality,” McConnell said on Thursday, emphasizing budget cuts.

Several senators who mostly stayed on the sidelines during much of Biden and McCarthy’s negotiations insisted on discussing ideas for restructuring the package. However, any change at this stage would almost certainly have derailed the compromise, and none were approved.

Instead, senators voted late into the night, rejecting various amendments but making their preferences clear. Conservative Republican senators wanted to include more spending cuts, while Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia wanted the approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline to be withdrawn.

Energy pipelines are important to Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who defended development throughout the state, saying the country cannot run without gas, coal, wind, or any other available energy source.

But Kane said it would be unfair for Congress to step in on a controversial project that he proposed amending the pipeline to be unpackaged, running through the state and digging up Appalachian land that had been owned by families for generations. claimed. .

South Carolina’s defense hawks, led by Senator Lindsey Graham, said military spending was increased in the deal but will keep up with inflation, especially as they focus on the extra spending needed this summer to help Ukraine fight the war. complained strongly that there was not enough Led by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Putin’s aggression is a defining moment of the 21st century,” Graham argued on the Senate floor. “What the House did was wrong.”

They got the deal out of Mr. Schumer, who read it out on the floor, and the debt ceiling would limit the Senate’s ability to approve other emergency supplemental funding for issues such as national security and disaster relief, including in Ukraine. He said he would “do nothing” about things. nationally important.

Overall, 46 Democratic senators and 17 Republican senators voted in favor of the policy. Thirty-one Republicans, four Democrats, and one Democrat-caucating independent voted against it.

Negotiators spent weeks working late into the night trying to reach a deal with the White House, and McCarthy spent days trying to garner support from skeptics.

The night before, tensions were high in the House of Representatives after far-right Republicans rejected the deal. Eerily, he warned that conservatives could try to oust McCarthy over the issue.

But Biden and McCarthy formed a bipartisan coalition, with the Democrats securing passage with a solid vote of 314 to 117. Overall, 71 House Republicans broke with McCarthy and rejected the deal.

“We did pretty well,” California Republican McCarthy said after the game.

Regarding the complaints of Republicans who said, spending limits weren’t enoughMcCarthy said this was just a “first step”.

The White House quickly turned its attention to the Senate, with top staff calling individual senators.

Democrats also voiced their frustrations, citing new labor requirements for older Americans ages 50 to 54 in food aid programs, groundbreaking changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, and the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline Natural Gas Project. denounced the approval of the government, claiming they were useless. Fight against climate change.

The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office said the spending caps included in the policy would reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over a decade, a top goal for Republicans in trying to contain the debt burden.

But in a surprise that complicated Republican support, the CBO said the motives behind the Republican push were: Labor Requirements for Older Americans Receiving Food Stamps Ultimately, that would add $2.1 billion to spending over this period. That’s because the final agreement exempts veterans and the homeless and expands food stamp rolls by 78,000 people each month, the CBO said.