The United States House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on Wednesday evening to advance a bipartisan bill to raise the debt ceiling, which limits the amount of money the federal government can borrow.
The vote comes as the government approaches the deadline of June 5 to lift the debt ceiling or default on its loans, a prospect that experts warn could have devastating effects for the US economy.
But Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy faced a divided party as he rallied votes for the 99-page deal, which would suspend the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit until January 2025.
Far-right members of the Republican Party have blasted the deal since it was announced on Sunday, after days of negotiations between congressional representatives and members of President Joe Biden’s Democratic White House.
Among the criticisms was the fact that the proposed spending cuts were not as deep as many Republicans hoped.
“This deal fails, fails completely,” Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania said at a news conference on Tuesday for the House Freedom Caucus, a far-right bloc of representatives. “And that’s why these members and others will be absolutely opposed to the deal, and we will do everything in our power to stop it and end it now.”
Another representative at the press conference, Texas’s Chip Roy, said that “the Republican right now has been torn asunder” by the terms of the deal. He highlighted the gains made during the 2022 midterm elections, when a Republican majority took control of the 435-member House.
“I want to be very clear: Not one Republican should vote for this bill. Not one,” Roy said in defiance of McCarthy’s efforts.
Criticism on both sides of political spectrum
The debt-ceiling deal needs 218 votes to pass the House and proceed to the Senate. But even progressive House Democrats have voiced opposition to the deal, slamming proposed changes to food assistance and other social safety net programmes.
“This was never about fiscal responsibility or reducing the deficit,” Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington state said of the debt deal in a post on Twitter.
“This is about hurting poor people and making them pay for tax breaks for the wealthiest while the GOP pushes their cruel, ideological priorities.”
She blamed “extreme” members of the Republican Party for failing to raise the debt ceiling “with no strings attached”.
Democratic leadership in the House, however, vowed to prevent any default from occurring.
“Defaulting on our debt and crashing the economy will hurt millions of everyday Americans,” top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “Right-wing extremists want to trigger a recession. House Dems will not allow that to happen.”
The White House also defended the deal against allegations that its compromises were too costly at the daily briefing with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
“Here’s the reality. When you negotiate in this way, no one’s going to get everything that they want,” she told reporters.
“What the president tried to do is protect the gains that he made, the historic gains that he made these last two years, and really key core Democratic values that we believe are important to American families.”
She added that Biden was “confident” the deal would reach his desk before June 5, the date when the US Treasury has indicated the government will likely default on its loans. The White House, she explained, has made more than 120 one-on-one calls with members of Congress to shore up support for the deal.
Negotiating the terms of the deal
Promoted by McCarthy and Biden, party leaders ordinarily at loggerheads, the deal represents a compromise after the Republican-led House passed a bill in April that was deemed a nonstarter by Democrats.
That bill would have lifted the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion, in exchange for major cuts to Biden’s domestic platform and other social programmes.
Faced with the prospect of a Biden veto, the two leaders agreed to negotiate new terms for Congress to vote upon. The current deal would suspend the debt limit until 2025, allowing the government to borrow as much money as it needs up to that point.
But it would limit government expense in other ways. Discretionary spending would be limited to one-percent growth over six years, though Congress would have to revisit that cap in 2025.
A report on Tuesday from the Congressional Budget Office found that the deal’s discretionary spending constraints could reduce the US deficit by $1.5 trillion from 2023 to 2033. McCarthy has touted it as the “largest spending cut in American history“.
In addition, under the terms of the new deal, the government would claw back billions in funding for the Internal Revenue Service as well as unspent COVID relief money, two Republican priorities.
Republicans also earned concessions in the form of additional work requirements for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, sometimes called food stamps. And under the terms of the deal, student loan repayments frozen under Biden would resume in August.
Unlike the previous bill in April, however, no additional work requirements would be imposed on recipients of Medicaid, a programme for low-income and elderly individuals. The new deal also preserves tax credits for clean energy initiatives championed by Biden.
Debate on the House floor
As the vote neared on Wednesday, both Republicans and Democrats took to the floor to present arguments accusing each other of intransigence and running down the clock on the debt ceiling.
“Frankly, we should not be here. We should have taken care of this months ago,” Democratic Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts said, echoing one of the day’s long-running themes.
But with five days remaining until the debt-ceiling deadline, each party took turns identifying who to blame.
“Every time Republicans are in charge, Mr Speaker, they screw things up,” McGovern told McCarthy, accusing his party of creating “totally manufactured crisis that jeopardizes the full faith and credit of the United States”.
Republican Tom Cole of Oklahoma, meanwhile, lobbed the same accusation back at the Democrats.
“An agreement like the one we’re considering today could and should have been in place much earlier. Instead President Biden dithered and refused to negotiate with House Republicans, pushing us right up to the very brink of catastrophic default,” Cole said.
“He insisted, over and over again, that it was his way or the highway. And he told us, over and over again, that the only thing that he would accept was a clean debt-ceiling increase. It was that or nothing.”
According to the US Treasury, Congress has lifted or amended the debt ceiling on 78 separate occasions since 1960, including 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democrats.
But in recent decades, the process has become increasingly contentious, with Congress facing gridlock over how to increase the debt limit and what expenses to cut.
Illinois Representative Delia Ramirez, a Democrat, compared this year’s debt-ceiling deal to a “hostage situation” and warned its terms were not something she could vote for.
“We should be voting a straightforward extension of the debt ceiling, but instead Republicans are more than willing to force our nation and economy into default just to score political wins,” she said.
Her fellow Democrat McGovern, meanwhile, questioned why military spending went untouched while discretionary spending for social programmes was on the chopping block.
“There are better ways to deal with our deficit than to further burden our nation’s most vulnerable. We can make sure the wealthy and well-connected pay their fair share. Let’s close the tax loopholes that millionares and billionaires exploit,” he said.
“This bill does the opposite. It cuts IRS funding that would have kept big corporations and the top one-percent in check.”
Texas Representative Roy of the Freedom Caucus, meanwhile, responded to McGovern, telling the House that US citizens were “fed up” with government spending that would burden future generations.
“Talk about food programmes. I don’t hear a whole hell of a lot about what we’re doing to devastate American families with rampant inflation because we keep spending money we don’t have,” Roy said, warning of a future where residents could no longer afford groceries.
Their comments were punctuated by an afternoon recess, as the House agreed to reconvene at 7:15pm US Eastern time (23:15 GMT) to continue debate and hold a vote.
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