2023-06-01 03:47:00
The United States House of Representatives gave half a sanction to the bill aimed at raising the limit of government debt in order to avoid a default and cut public spendingafter extensive negotiations between the ruling party and the opposition, reported the local press.
The initiative was approved around 9:30 p.m. (10:30 p.m. in Argentina) with 314 votes in favor and 117 againstaccording to CNN television.
149 Republicans and 165 Democrats voted in favor, while 71 Republicans and 46 Democrats opposed.the station specified.
The bill must be debated and voted on by the Senate and, if approved, must be signed into law by President Joe Biden to take effect before next Monday, the deadline set by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
About the project
The initiative is the result of an agreement reached after several days of marathon negotiations between Biden and the speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthyof the opposition Republican Party.
The vote, which was expected to be stormy and would not be uniform across the benches, came after yesterday the text raffled its first test with the approval in commission.
“Our bipartisan budget agreement averts the worst possible crisis: a default for the first time in our nation’s history, an economic recession, devastated retirement accounts and millions of lost jobs,” Biden wrote earlier on Twitter.
The bipartisan budget agreement prevents what could have been a catastrophic default and would have led to an economic recession, retirement accounts devastated, and millions of jobs lost.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 30, 2023
Congress, whose control is divided between Democrats and Republicans, has a few days to spare before the country’s treasury runs out of liquidity, which will happen next Monday, according to Yellen.
However, the terms of the agreement reached are rejected by a large number of conservative Republican legislators and also by a handful of progressive Democratic legislatorswhose votes are respectively courted by McCarthy and Biden, which raised questions about how the vote could turn out.
Without this, The United States risks a default or cessation of payments on its obligationssomething unprecedented that can have catastrophic consequences for the economy.
The bill suspends the so-called debt ceiling until January 2025, long enough to get through the upcoming 2024 presidential election, in which Biden is seeking re-election..
In exchange for achieving this concession, the president accepted the Republican demand to limit some expenses in order to keep them stable -except the military- in 2024 and set their increase at 1% for 2025.
It also provides a reduction of 10,000 million dollars in the funds assigned to the treasury to modernize and intensify controls.
“Nobody got everything they wanted. But that is the responsibility of governing,” Biden said.
On Tuesday, the House Rules Committee gave a first indication of the expected trend in voting on the bill, approving the law by a vote of seven to six, with two Republicans and four Democrats against.
Now it is up to the congressmen of the House of Representatives, with a Republican majority, rule on the vote before the Senate, with a Democratic majority, does so.
Biden “firmly” invited legislators yesterday to adopt this law, the result of the compromise that he himself negotiated.
“Let’s keep moving forward in meeting our obligations and build the most powerful economy in human history,” the president said on Twitter.
For his part, McCarthy had the tough task of convincing the Republican majority to adopt the new law. so that it does not appear that it depends on the Democratic representatives.
The claim seemed more difficult than expected because the opposition within the Republican Party appears to be outpacing the number of supporters of former President Donald Trump in the House.
Nancy Mace, Republican congresswoman for the state of South Carolina, affirmed today that she will not vote in favor of the text.
“This ‘agreement’ formalizes the expected record level of federal spending during the pandemic and makes it the baseline for future spending,” Mace criticized, the AFP news agency reported.
Chip Roy, a Texas congressman from the Republican wing that supports Trump, called it a “bad deal” that “no Republican should vote for.”
“We are going to continue the fight today and tomorrow no matter what happens,” Roy said.
Some Republicans are even considering a vote of no confidence to force McCarthy to resign as Speaker of the House.
McCarthy acknowledged that he will not achieve unanimity, but he was optimistic of reaching the “biggest” budget cuts in history.he told reporters.
On the Democratic side, some are also skeptical. Rep. Ro Khanna of California said several of his colleagues oppose the budget cuts and “don’t know yet” how they’re going to vote.
For his part, Senator Bernie Sanders anticipated that he will not give his support to the project. “At a time of great inequality of wealth and income, I cannot, with a clear conscience, vote for a bill that deprives women, infants, children and the elderly of vital nutritional assistance, while refusing to ask billionaires who have never been better off to pay a penny more in taxes,” he said in a statement.
Still, the head of the caucus, Hakeem Jeffries, said House Democrats will vote so that “the country doesn’t default. Period.”
McCarthy’s office also said the agreement provides for the recovery of “billions of dollars of Covid funds that were not spent” during the coronavirus pandemic, without elaborating.
One of the points of contention includes the modifications to the conditions to benefit from some social aid, such as the increase in the working age from 49 to 54 years for adults without children who aspire to food aid.
However, the bill eliminates this requirement for veterans and indigents.
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