The House Just Passed McCarthy and Biden's Debt-Ceiling Deal
Category: News & Politics
Via: vic-eldred • 11 months ago • 6 commentsBy: Ayelet Sheffey (Business Insider)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The House of Representatives just took a major step in preventing the US from defaulting on its debt in a matter of days.
On Wednesday night, the House passed President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy's bill — the Fiscal Responsibility Act — to suspend the debt ceiling through January 1, 2025 by a vote of 314-117. It was far from an easy process to get to this point. For months, Biden and McCarthy had been at odds over the best approach to address the debt-ceiling crisis. McCarthy passed a bill in the House last month to raise the debt ceiling through March 2023 accompanied by $4.5 trillion in spending cuts, while Biden was adamant raising the debt ceiling should be a clean and bipartisan deal, without any spending cuts attached.
Biden and McCarthy's bill will cut spending by at least $1.5 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and it has provisions that include codifying the end of the student-loan payment pause and new work requirements on federal programs like SNAP.
"This agreement is good news for the American people and the American economy," Biden said in a statement following its passage. "It protects key priorities and accomplishments from the past two years, including historic investments that are creating good jobs across the country. And, it honors my commitment to safeguard Americans' health care and protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It protects critical programs that millions of hardworking families, students, and veterans count on."
—President Biden (@POTUS) June 1, 2023
It wasn't immediately clear that the bill would pass the House. Shortly after the text was released, it gained opposition from both sides of the aisle — some Democratic lawmakers were unhappy with the spending cuts in the deal, while conservative lawmakers were hoping for bigger cuts on more federal programs. The bill now heads to the Senate, where it faces some opposition, as well.
"I have real concerns about a bill that is designed to take away food from hungry people, to make students who are struggling with debt lock in to pay more, to slow down our efforts in the climate fight and to help out wealthy tax cheats," Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren told reporters on Tuesday. "The Republicans have taken hostage of our economy and our good name around the world. And Democrats are forced into having to play the role of grown-ups in the room."
However, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have already expressed support for the bill, hoping to corral members of both of their parties to vote for its passage.
"President Biden and Speaker McCarthy's agreement will protect the economy and eliminate the threat of a catastrophic default. I support this bipartisan agreement. Nobody's getting all they want—but it takes default off the table and protects key investments we've made," Schumer wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
McConnell also wrote that McCarthy "and House Republicans secured a crucial first step toward bringing Washington Democrats' reckless spending to heel. Their unity forced President Biden to do his job. And soon, it will be the Senate's turn to pass this important agreement."
Congress needs to act quickly to pass the legislation and get it to Biden's desk before the US could default as soon as June 5.
"Senators should be prepared to move on this bill quickly once it is the Senate's turn to act," Schumer said on Wednesday. "I cannot stress enough that we have no margin—no margin—for error."
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Let us call it a first step. It was the best House Republicans could hope for.
We still have a federal spending rate greater than at any time in US history.
Agreed, the best they could get at this time. Now the House IMO needs to start working on the budget. I hope they work each appropriations bill separately and provide sufficient time for review for each bill rather than what has been the norm for several years now to create one giant omibus bill and push it thru at the last minute. I think we've all seen way too much of "you have to pass it to know what's in it" crap. Bring down spending in the budgets and restore some pride in what Washington does for a change..
I think all of that could happen.
Did you think McCarthy would ever be able to do the things he has done?
What a pleasant surprise he has been.
Taylor Wilson:
Good. Thanks for joining us here once again this week. So the House has passed a bipartisan agreement to avoid default on the nation's debt. How did this vote play out, Joey?
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, I mean really it was an overwhelming vote. The final tally was 314 to 117. That's four versus against with strong majorities from both Republicans and Democrats voting for it. So heading into this, we heard a lot of unrest from kind of the left flank and the right flank of the Democratic and Republican parties respectively in Congress. Your more liberal Democrats were concerned with some of the work requirements. The Republicans gotten the bill for welfare programs as well as some of the permitting reform on oil and gas projects, whereas some of the hard-line conservative Republicans said hey, these aren't spending cuts that go far enough. But in the end, the middle stuck together and really it was, I say the middle, but also just a large majority of both parties stuck together to push this thing forward.
Gee, I seem to remember just a few short months ago how Democrats were talking all about how ineffective McCarthy would be.
Whoops!