WASHINGTON — The Senate began debate on a series of proposed amendments to a House-approved bill to boost the debt ceiling and cap government spending, which Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber would pass Thursday night.
“Either side have just locked in an agreement that permits the Senate to pass laws tonight that avoids default,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
The votes on 11 amendments began at around 7:30 p.m. ET, and were expected to take several hours. But once they were accomplished, Schumer said the Senate would proceed immediately to a vote on the debt ceiling, which was expected to pass in time to avert a potentially disastrous U.S. debt default.
“America can breathe a sigh of relief because on this process, we’re avoiding default,” Schumer said. “Let’s finish the job and send this very vital bipartisan bill to the President’s desk tonight.”
Driving the pace Thursday was the looming June 5 deadline for raising or suspending the debt ceiling, just 4 days away. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the federal government would almost certainly be unable to satisfy its debt obligations next week unless Congress voted to boost the debt limit.
Under normal rules, it could take the Senate about every week to maneuver an easy bill to the ground and vote on it.
With a view to bypass those rules and vote on the bill in time to satisfy the Monday deadline, Schumer needed the unanimous consent of each senator.
For much of the day on Thursday, that consent proved elusive, owing largely to a gaggle of Senate Republicans who demanded that Schumer conform to back a supplemental defense funding bill and funding for Ukraine before they’d consent to fast-tracking the debt ceiling vote.
The senators were chiefly concerned that the bill passed by the House Wednesday night, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, didn’t adequately fund the military, and that spending caps mandated by the bill could cut into the Pentagon’s budget.
The bill calls for $886 billion in defense spending for fiscal yr 2024, a rise of three% yr over yr. That figure increases to $895 billion in 2025, a rise of 1%.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called that figure “woefully inadequate” in a speech on the Senate floor, arguing that a 1% increase didn’t keep pace with inflation, so in practical terms, it was actually a decrease in military funding.
However the defense hawks weren’t the one holdouts who Schumer needed to appease before the debt ceiling bill could move quickly to votes.
For instance, Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine introduced an amendment that might remove a provision within the House bill that effectively greenlights a controversial natural gas project, the Mountain Valley Pipeline through West Virginia and Virginia.
Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee proposed an amendment to remove a line within the House bill that might allow the director of the Office of Management and Budget to unilaterally waive some spending restrictions on federal regulators in the event that they determined that the spending was needed for “effective program delivery.”
In some ways, the amendment votes were political theater. Each was doomed to fail, and their failure guaranteed that the Senate wouldn’t should send an amended bill back to the House for one more vote.
Schumer made it clear all week that he wouldn’t let the debt ceiling bill be amended, essentially moving it back to the starting gate within the House.
“We won’t send anything back to the House,” he told reporters within the Capitol. “That will risk default, plain and straightforward.”
But for the senators who proposed the amendments, getting a vote on the Senate floor was enough, ensuring that their objections were heard and their colleagues were forced to go on the record with a vote.
If the Treasury were to fail to satisfy its obligations, economists agree that it could likely send global markets into shock, trigger job losses within the U.S. and jeopardize the delivery of significant government advantages that tens of tens of millions of Americans depend on to survive.
The Fiscal Responsibility Act was the results of a deal reached between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Biden, which essentially handed conservatives several ideological policy victories in exchange for his or her votes to boost the debt ceiling beyond next yr’s presidential election and into 2025.
The bill passed within the House 314-117, with support from more Democrats than Republicans.
It is a developing story, please check back for updates.
