House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) walks following a closed door meeting on Captiol Hill in Washington, April 26, 2023.
Tom Brenner | Reuters
WASHINGTON — A Republican bill to lift the debt limit and slash government funding passed the House on Wednesday, after eleventh hour changes won over a gaggle of holdouts inside the GOP caucus.
The ultimate tally was 217-215. 4 Republicans joined Democrats in voting against their party’s signature piece of laws.
The vote was a victory for embattled House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., capping off a 24-hour sprint that saw party leaders work past 2 a.m. ET on Wednesday morning to amend the bill.
The last-minute revisions included a rescue for ethanol and biofuel tax credits, which were set to be eliminated under the unique bill. The prospect of losing the tax breaks infuriated a bloc of Republicans from Iowa and nearby states, who threatened to sink the bill unless McCarthy agreed to preserve the tax breaks, which he did.
One other bloc of conservatives demanded that McCarthy revise the bill to hurry up implementation of recent work requirements for adults who receive food stamps or Medicaid advantages. McCarthy also agreed to that demand.
With a margin of just 4 Republican votes for the bill to pass along party lines, McCarthy couldn’t afford to lose either bloc’s support.
Still, the amendments rankled some rank-and-file members of the GOP caucus, because they got here after McCarthy had prohibited members from introducing their very own amendments, and insisted the bill in its original form was final and never up for discussion.
The Limit, Save and Grow Act has little to no likelihood of becoming law, which could help to elucidate why Republicans were ultimately willing to overlook McCarthy’s last minute, backroom deals.
As a substitute of viewing the provisions within the 320-page bill as future laws, per se, House Republicans view the plan more as a symbolic opening bid within the negotiations McCarthy will hold with President Joe Biden later this 12 months over the debt limit and federal funding.
“There was a number of exertions that is gone into how best to start out this negotiation,” House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., told reporters Wednesday.
The White House sees things very in a different way, nonetheless.
“This bill is reckless try to extract extreme concessions as a condition for the USA simply paying the bills it has already incurred,” the Office of Management and Budget declared in a proper notice to the House on Tuesday that Biden would veto the GOP debt limit bill if it ever reached his desk.
“The President has been clear that he is not going to accept such attempts at hostage-taking. House Republicans must take default off the table and address the debt limit without demands and conditions,” the White House said.
While the White House and congressional Republicans remain miles apart, the clock is ticking for America’s ability to service its massive debt and proceed to operate the federal government.
Without congressional approval on a bill to lift the debt limit or suspend it, the USA could face the unthinkable prospect of a default.
Several latest reports this week suggest that a bigger than expected drop in federal tax receipts this 12 months may hasten the arrival of the so-called X-date. That is the projected date the Treasury Department will exhaust the emergency measures it’s taking to stop a federal debt default.
A note from Goldman Sachs predicted the “debt limit deadline to fall in late July,” so long as federal tax receipts only fell by 30% over last 12 months. If federal revenues fell by 35%, nonetheless, the x-date could move as much as “early June.”
