THE HOUSE of Representatives passed a Bill late yesterday intended to raise the debt ceiling by $900 billion and cut deficit spending by $917 billion over the next decade, by a vote of 218 to 210 – a margin of one vote over the 217 required for passage.
Although the debt measure put forward by Speaker John Boehner was likely to be defeated as early as last night in the Senate, it marked the first legislation aimed at averting a partial default on the US’s $14.3 trillion debt on Tuesday.
The Senate Democratic majority leader Harry Reid is now expected to craft a compromise Bill with the Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell which can obtain bi-partisan agreement in the upper chamber. That Bill will then have to pass a vote in the House, and reach president Barack Obama’s desk for signature before the Tuesday deadline. Negotiations will continue through the weekend.
Mr Boehner had promised the vote on Monday night, but took four days to garner enough support from freshman Republican Representatives loyal to the far right-wing Tea Party.
By toughening the terms of the Bill, Mr Boehner was able to persuade Tea Party diehards to support him.
A provision that Congress would vote on a balanced budget amendment before a second tranche of increased debt limit is authorised early next year was changed to a stipulation that Congress must pass such an amendment.
Mr Reid expressed disbelief at the re-drafted Bill, saying, “How bizarre can people be?”
Mr Boehner’s last speech before his Bill’s passage typified the bitterness surrounding the debt ceiling debate.
“I stuck my neck out a mile to try to get an agreement with the president of the United States,” he said.
“I put revenues on the table in order to try to come to an agreement, to avoid being where we are today. A lot of people in this town can never say Yes.”
Earlier in the day, Mr Obama reiterated his appeal to the American people to “keep the pressure on Washington” by making phone calls and sending emails and tweets.
“We are almost out of time,” Mr Obama warned.
He criticised the House for “trying to pass a Bill that a majority of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have already said they won’t vote for.”
“The last train is leaving the station, and this is a last chance to avert a default,” Mr Reid said of his own alternate plan.
A commerce department report released yesterday showed the US recession was deeper and the recovery weaker than previously thought.
The report “underscores the need to end the uncertainty surrounding the risk of default and put in place a balanced approach to deficit reduction,” said Austan Goolsbee, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors.
In his column in the
Washington Post
, the columnist Charles Krauthammer, a hero to conservatives, warned the Tea Party that they had mistaken their “blocking minority” for a “governing authority” which was “counter-constitutional” and “selfdestructive”.
The Wall Street financier Steve Rattner called the Tea Party “terrorists” on MSNBC television, likening them to aman strapped with dynamite in Times Square.