The bill passed on a bipartisan vote Wednesday, losing a faction of Republicans who said it was insufficient to tackle the debt, as well as Democrats who opposed the spending cuts.
WASHINGTON \u2014 With overwhelming bipartisan support, the House voted Wednesday to pass the debt ceiling legislation negotiated by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden, sending it to the Senate with days to spare before a potentially disastrous default.
The vote was 314 to 117, with 149 Republicans joining 165 Democrats.
The bill would extend the debt limit for two years alongside a two-year budget agreement if signed into law. It is the culmination of months of political warfare and weeks of frenzied negotiations between the two parties that finally broke a lengthy stalemate over the issue.
The McCarthy-Biden deal overcame heavy criticism from GOP hard-liners, who argued that its spending cuts and conservative provisions are too weak. It also faced opposition from Democrats, who criticized the added work requirements and non-defense spending cuts negotiated by the two men.
\u201cYou are getting so many wins for the American people in this bill,\u201d McCarthy said, hailing it as a measure that \u201cmoves us in the right direction\u201d fiscally. He said his message to fellow Republicans on Wednesday was: \u201cYou\u2019re not spending more money. There\u2019s no new government programs. There\u2019s no tax increases. There\u2019s nothing in the bill that you really should be negative about.\u201d
Biden praised passage.
“This budget agreement is a bipartisan compromise,” Biden said in a statement. “Neither side got everything it wanted. That\u2019s the responsibility of governing.”
The bill now goes to the Democratic-led Senate, where it needs 60 votes before it can get to Biden\u2019s desk. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have both endorsed it and called for speedy passage.
The White House has urged passage of the bill as the U.S. nears Monday’s deadline to act or risk an economically catastrophic default on the nation’s debt. The deal contains modest spending cuts and suspends the borrowing limit to Jan. 1, 2025 \u2014 with Treasury then able to use extraordinary measures to pay the bills.
House Republican leaders always expected to lose some votes, mostly from hard-right members who say the deal isn’t aggressive enough at delivering spending cuts. That meant some Democrats were needed to get it over the finish line.
\u201cHouse Democrats are going to make sure that the country does not default \u2014 period, full stop,\u201d said Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. \u201cWe will continue to be responsible stewards of our economy. And we will not let middle-class Americans, working families, those who aspire to be part of the middle class, seniors, veterans, the poor, the sick and the afflicted, be hurt by a dangerous GOP manufactured default.\u201d
The legislation would cap spending for the next two years. It includes conservative measures that would claw back about $28 billion in unspent Covid relief funds, eliminate $1.4 billion in IRS funding and shift roughly $20 billion of the $80 billion\u2002the IRS got through the Inflation Reduction Act to non-defense funding.
The bill would also restart federal student loan payments after a lengthy pause that began at the start of the pandemic. And it would add work requirements for people up to 55 years old to get benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (the current threshold is 50 years old), with carve-outs for veterans and homeless people.
The Biden-McCarthy doesn’t make changes to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that if the bill’s spending caps and targets are followed, it would reduce federal discretionary spending by $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years. Only the first two years of spending levels are binding under the legislation, however.
The SNAP reforms would actually net out a spending increase of $2.1 billion, CBO found. The new work rules would save $6.5 billion, but the new exclusions for homeless people and veterans would add 78,000 new people to SNAP benefit rolls and cost $8.6 billion.
Hard-right members tore into the measure.
Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., said the conservative policy provisions were actually “fictionalized suggestions of change” that are insignificant. “In effect what they\u2019ve done” is a “clean” debt limit extension with no substantive policy additions, he argued, portraying it as a surrender to Biden’s demands.
“And so there’s nothing there,” said Bishop. “If you’re going to do tacitly a clean debt ceiling, make it short.”
Senators who oppose it, like Mike Lee, R-Utah, have procedural tools they could use to try and slow it down past Monday’s deadline. Schumer has encouraged members to act quickly to avoid default.
“Senators should be prepared to move on this bill quickly once it is the Senate’s turn to act. I cannot stress enough that we have no margin \u2014 no margin \u2014 for error,” Schumer said Wednesday, warning that “any needless delay, any last-minute brinkmanship” could mean that “the federal government will default for the first time ever.”
McConnell quickly praised House passage of the bill on Twitter and added: \u201cNow, it\u2019s the Senate\u2019s turn to pass this agreement without delay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n