The Senate on Thursday evening voted to approve a debt-ceiling deal just in time for the June 1 deadline established by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, bringing the U.S. back from the brink of default after a close call in Congress.
Lawmakers voted 63 to 36 to pass the bill. On Wednesday, the House passed the measure after a few hours of debate with 314 members in favor and 117 members opposing. As in the House, the measure was pushed over the line by Democrats, 44 of whom voted in favor of the package; they were joined by 17 Republicans.
The bill now goes to President Biden’s desk to be signed into law. Biden will make a speech to the public Friday on the collaborative effort between the parties to negotiate the bill and prevent default.
The White House and House Republicans, led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, brokered the agreement, which suspends the $31.4 trillion debt limit until 2025 in exchange for some spending cuts.
McCarthy touted the bill as the “largest spending cut that Congress has ever voted for” but faced resistance from members of his caucus who believe it doesn’t do enough to return the U.S. to pre-pandemic spending levels. Many House Freedom Caucus members, such as Representatives Chip Roy, Dan Bishop, and Byron Donalds, voted against it after calling it a betrayal to future generations, who will bear the brunt of the country’s unstable fiscal state.
Even though the bill was a bipartisan effort, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer only gave Biden and his Democratic colleagues credit for stabilizing the situation, saying, “We may be a little tired, but we did it. Default was the giant sword hanging over America’s head, but because of the good work of President Biden, as well as Democrats in the House and Democrats in the Senate, we are not defaulting.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called the measure “an important step toward fiscal sanity.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the deal will reduce budget deficits by about $1.5 trillion between 2023 and 2033. Some significant concessions to the GOP were made, such as the tightening of work requirements for welfare programs, the expediting of a natural-gas pipeline project in West Virginia, returning unused Covid funds, and rescinding a small fraction of the massive chunk of money granted to the IRS for new tax enforcement.