Senate approves Biden’s controversial debt ceiling deal – bill now moves to president’s desk

The Senate, led by moderates in both parties, overwhelmingly approved Thursday night the so-called “compromise” on the debt ceiling negotiated by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The deal helps ward off a U.S. bankruptcy, as the Senate gave final approval to a debt ceiling and austerity packagegrinding into the night to finish work on the bipartisan deal and send it to Biden’s office to become law.

The package negotiated by Biden and McCarthy leaves neither Republicans nor Democrats fully satisfied with the outcome.

But the result, after weeks of hard-fought budget negotiations, challenges the threat of the volatile debt ceiling issue turning the US and the world economy upside down until 2025 after the next presidential election.

Approval in the Senate after a bipartisan vote, 63-36, mirrored the overwhelming House count the day before, relying on centrists in both parties to bring about the Biden-McCarthy package.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said passing the bill means “America can breathe a sigh of relief.”

He said, “We avoid non-payment.”

Biden said in a post-vote statement that senators from both parties “have demonstrated once again that America is a nation that pays its bills and honors its obligations — and always will be.”

He said he would sign the bill as soon as possible. “No one gets everything they want in a negotiation, but make no mistake, this bipartisan deal is a great victory for our economy and the American people,” the president said.

The White House said it would address the nation on the matter Friday at 7 p.m. EDT.

Quick action was vital if Washington hoped to meet deadline next Mondaywhen the Treasury Department has said the US will begin to run short of cash to pay its bills, risking devastating bankruptcy.

Raising the country’s debt limit, now $31.4 trillion, would allow the Treasury to borrow to pay off already incurred US debt.

In the end, confronting the debt ceiling was a familiar high-stakes battle in Congress, one initiated by McCarthy and driven by a far-right Republican majority in the House confronting the Democratic president with a new era of divided government in Washington.

McCarthy declined a one-time routine vote to lift the country’s debt limit without concessions and brought Biden’s White House to the negotiating table to broker a deal that would force spending cuts to curb the country’s deficits.

General, the bill of 99 pages limits spending for the next two years, suspends the debt ceiling until January 2025 and changes a number of policies, including the imposition of new job requirements for older Americans receiving food aid And greenlighting of a natural gas pipeline in the Appalachians which many Democrats oppose.

It boosts defense and veterans funds, cuts spending new money for agents of the tax authorities and rejects Biden’s call to reverse Trump-era tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy to help cover the country’s deficits.

It also imposes automatic one percent cuts if Congress does not pass its annual spending bills.

After the House overwhelmingly approved the package late Wednesday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell signaled that he too did not want to waste time getting it passed into law.

McConnell praised his cuts, saying on Thursday, “The Senate has an opportunity to make that important progress.”

After being largely sidelined during much of the Biden-McCarthy negotiations, several senators pushed for debate on their ideas to reshape the package.

But making changes at this stage would almost certainly derail the compromise and none were adopted.

Instead, senators dragged themselves through ballots late into the night, rejecting the various amendments but making their preferences clear.

Conservative Republican senators wanted further cuts, while Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia sought to withdraw approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

The energy pipeline is important to Center Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, and he defended the development running through his state, saying the country cannot run without the power of gas, coal, wind and all available energy sources.

But by offering an amendment to remove the pipeline from the package, Kaine argued it wouldn’t be fair for Congress to step into a controversial project that he said would also run through his state and take land in Appalachia. boasting that has been in families for generations. .

Defense hawks led by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham strongly complained that military spending, while increased in the deal, was not enough to keep up with inflation — especially as they target additional spending that will be needed this summer to support Ukraine against the war being waged. by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Putin’s invasion is a defining moment of the 21st century,” Graham argued from the Senate floor. “What the House has done is wrong.”

They got an agreement from Schumer, which he read on the floor, that said the debt ceiling deal “does nothing” to limit the Senate’s ability to approve other emergency funds for national security, including for Ukraine, or for disaster relief and other issues. of national importance.

For weeks, negotiators worked late into the night to close the deal with the White House, and for days McCarthy had been building support among skeptics.

Tensions had run high in the House the night before when far-right Republicans rejected the deal.

Ominously, the Conservatives warned of possible attempts to oust McCarthy on the issue.

But Biden and McCarthy assembled a bipartisan coalition, with the Democrats ensuring they went through with a solid 314-117 vote. All told, 71 House Republicans broke with McCarthy to reject the deal.

“We did pretty well,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said afterwards.

As for the dissatisfaction of the Republicans who said the spending restrictions did not go far enoughMcCarthy said it was just a “first step.”

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

Democrats also had complaints, disapproving of the new job requirements for older Americans, who are 50-54, in the food aid program, the changes to the landmark National Environmental Policy Act, and the approval of the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline natural gas project that they say is not helpful in combat climate change.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said spending restrictions in the package would reduce deficits by $1.5 trillion over the decade, a top goal for Republicans trying to curb debt.

However, in a surprise that complicated Republican support, the CBO said their drive to impose job requirements for older Americans who receive food stamps would increase spending by $2.1 billion over the period.

That’s because the final deal exempts veterans and the homeless, expanding food stamp rolls by 78,000 people monthly, the CBO said.