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The Senate may begin voting as early as Thursday evening on the debt ceiling bill that passed the House a day earlier, with the US creeping closer to the 5 June deadline to avert a potentially disastrous federal default.
The Senate majority leader, the New York Democrat Chuck Schumer, vowed that the upper chamber would “stay in session until we send a bill avoiding default to President Biden’s desk”.
“We will keep working until the job is done,” Schumer said in a Thursday floor speech. “Time is a luxury the Senate does not have if we want to prevent default.”
Schumer’s comments came one day after the House passed the debt ceiling bill in a resounding, bipartisan vote of 314 to 117. The bill – which was negotiated between Biden and the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy of California – would suspend the government’s borrowing limit until January 2025, ensuring the issue will not resurface before the next presidential election.
As part of the negotiations over the bill, McCarthy successfully pushed for modest government spending cuts and changes to the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Programs.
The Senate minority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, endorsed the bill, even as he acknowledged that lawmakers must take further action to tackle the federal government’s debt of more than $31tn.
“The Fiscal Responsibility Act avoids the catastrophic consequences of a default on our nation’s debt,” McConnell said. “The deal the House passed last night is a promising step toward fiscal sanity. But make no mistake: there is much more work to be done. The fight to reel in wasteful government spending is far from over.”
The cuts outlined in the debt ceiling bill were deemed insufficient by several Republican senators, who indicated they would oppose the legislation over their concerns that it does too little to rein in government spending. Those concerns were shared by many House Republicans, 71 of whom voted against the bill on Wednesday.
“It doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t do the basic things that it purports to do,” Senator Mike Lee, a Republican of Utah, told Fox News on Thursday morning. “If this bill did what its lead advocates claim that it did, I’d be thrilled to vote for it, but it doesn’t. In case after case, the cuts that it proposes won’t materialize.”
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Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, also warned that the bill does not sufficiently fund the Pentagon and he accused McCarthy of accepting a weak deal from Biden.
“To my House colleagues: I can’t believe you did this,” Graham said in a floor speech. “To the speaker: I know you got a tough job, I like you, but the party of Ronald Reagan is dying. Don’t tell me that a defense budget that’s $42bn below inflation fully funds the military.”
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Senate Democrats also voiced criticism of certain provisions in the bill, including the expedited approval of the controversial Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline. Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat of Virginia, has pushed for a vote on an amendment to remove the pipeline provision from the debt ceiling bill and the upper chamber is expected to consider several changes to the legislation. But party leaders predicted those votes would fail and the Senate would then move on to the final passage of the debt ceiling bill.
“Default is not an option and that means we have to pass this bill,” Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois, told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I’m going to have to swallow hard on some parts of it. I’m sure other members say the same thing. But the responsible thing to do for America is to pass it.”
Biden, who will return to Washington on Thursday evening after having delivered the commencement address at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado, has said he stands ready to sign the bill as soon as it is passed.
“I have been clear that the only path forward is a bipartisan compromise that can earn the support of both parties. This agreement meets that test,” Biden said on Wednesday after the House passage of the bill. “I urge the Senate to pass it as quickly as possible so that I can sign it into law and our country can continue building the strongest economy in the world.”
