US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, speaks to members of the media on the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on Monday, May 22, 2023.
Ting Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — The compromise bill to lift the debt ceiling that House Republicans released on Sunday faces its first major test on Tuesday within the House Rules Committee, where two of the panel’s nine Republicans have already signaled they are going to oppose bringing it to the House floor for a vote.
The Fiscal Responsibility Act is the product of a deal hammered out by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden to cap federal baseline spending for 2 years in exchange for Republican votes to lift the debt ceiling beyond next 12 months’s elections and into 2025.
The bill must pass the GOP majority House and the Democratic-controlled Senate before June 5, when the Treasury Department projects the USA can be unlikely to have the funds for to fulfill its debt obligations.
A bloc of conservative Republicans have publicly attacked the compromise bill, accusing McCarthy of caving in to the White House. Several Democrats, too, have panned the deal, which incorporates latest work requirements for food stamps that many progressives said was a red line.
McCarthy desires to hold a vote on the bill Wednesday.
But before a bill can receive a vote in the complete House, it should be approved by a majority of the 13-member House Rules Committee, which sets the foundations of debate on the bill.
The committee is scheduled to fulfill at 3 p.m. ET on Tuesday to hash out the foundations of the debt ceiling vote.
The panel’s makeup is heavily skewed toward the party in the bulk, 9-4, a arrange meant to make sure that laws didn’t get held up by a number of dissenters siding with the minority.
However it only takes three Republicans to side with the 4 Democrats with a view to delay the bill.
And as of Tuesday morning, two Republican members of the Rules Committee, Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, had already said they planned to do exactly that.
“Workarounds, fuzzy math, and no real cuts… this #DebtCeiling deal is weak all over the place it needed to be strong,” Norman tweeted on Tuesday morning.
A 3rd member of the panel, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, had yet to say Tuesday morning whether he would support the bill.
If the Fiscal Responsibility Act were to stall within the Rules Committee, it might resurrect the approaching threat of a debt default, with lower than every week before the deadline.
It is a developing story, please check back for updates.
