WASHINGTON (AP) – Shunning a default crisis, the House overwhelmingly approved a package of debt ceiling and budget cuts, sending the deal that President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy brokered to the Senate for quick approval in a matter of days, ahead of a fast-approaching deadline.
The hard-fought compromise pleased few, but lawmakers said it was better than the alternative: devastating economic upheaval if Congress failed to act. Tensions rose as right-wing Republicans balked at the deal, but Biden and McCarthy assembled a bipartisan coalition to push for passage on a solid 314-117 vote late Wednesday.
“We did pretty well,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said afterward.
Amid deep discontent among Republicans who said the spending restrictions did not go far enough, McCarthy said it is only a “first step.”
Biden, watching the tale from Colorado Springs, where he is scheduled to deliver the commencement speech at the US Air Force Academy on Thursday, called McCarthy and other congressional leaders after the vote. In a statement, he called the result “good news for the American people and the American economy.”
Washington is rushing after a long debate to wrap up work on the package to ensure the government can keep paying its bills and avoid financial turmoil at home and abroad. Next Monday is when the Treasury has said the US would run out of money and risk a dangerous default.
Biden had been calling lawmakers directly to bolster support. McCarthy worked to sell skeptical fellow Republicans, even defending challenges to his leadership.
It will take a similar bipartisan effort from Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to overcome the objections.
Overall, the 99-page bill would take some steps to rein in the nation’s deficits as Republicans have called for, without rolling back Trump-era tax breaks as Biden wanted. To overcome this, Biden and McCarthy had the support of the political center, a rarity in a divided Washington.
A compromise, the package curbs spending over the next two years, suspends the debt ceiling until January 2025 and changes some policies, including imposing new work requirements for older Americans on food assistance and the green light of an Appalachian natural gas pipeline that many Democrats oppose. Strengthens funding for defense and veterans, and provides new money for Internal Revenue Service agents.
Raising the nation’s debt limit, now $31 trillion, ensures that the Treasury can borrow to pay off America’s already incurred debts.
The chief GOP deal negotiator, Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, said Republicans were fighting for budget cuts after recent years of additional spending, first during the COVID-19 crisis and later with the Act of reducing Biden’s inflation, with his historic investment to fight climate change. with income elsewhere.
But Republican Rep. Chip Roy, a member of the Freedom Caucus who helps lead the opposition, said, “My beef is that you got a deal that shouldn’t have been cut.”
For weeks, negotiators worked late into the night to reach a deal with the White House, and for days McCarthy has worked to build support among skeptics. At one point, attendees brought pizza to the Capitol the night before the vote as he briefed Republicans, asked questions and encouraged them to keep the bill’s budget savings in mind.
The speaker faced a tough crowd. Encouraged by conservative senators and outside groups, the far-right House Freedom Caucus criticized the compromise as falling well short of necessary spending cuts and vowed to try to stop the passage.
A much larger conservative faction, the Republican Study Committee, declined to take a position. Even grassroots centrist conservatives were unsure, leaving McCarthy scrambling for votes from his slim Republican majority.
Ominously, conservatives warned they might try to oust McCarthy over the compromise.
One influential Republican, former President Donald Trump, held fire: “It is what it is,” he said of the deal in an interview with Iowa radio host Simon Conway.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said it is up to McCarthy to get Republican votes in the 435-member chamber, where 218 votes are needed for approval.
As the count failed in an afternoon procedural vote, Jeffries remained silent and held up his green ballot, indicating that Democrats would fill the gap to ensure passage. They did so, advancing the bill that far-right Republicans, many in the Freedom Caucus, refused to support.
“Once again, House Democrats to the rescue to avoid a dangerous flaw,” said Jeffries, DN.Y.
“What does that say about this extreme MAGA Republican majority?” he said of the party aligned with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” political movement.
Then, in the final vote hours later, Democrats again secured passage, leading the count, as 71 Republicans countered their majority and voted against it.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the package’s spending restrictions would reduce deficits by $1.5 trillion over the decade, a key goal for Republicans trying to rein in the debt burden.
In a surprise that complicated Republican support, however, the CBO said its willingness to impose work requirements on older Americans receiving food stamps would end up increasing spending by $2.1 billion over the time That’s because the final deal exempts veterans and the homeless, expanding food stamp rolls by 78,000 people a month, the CBO said.
Liberal discontent, however, was strong as nearly four dozen Democrats also defected, decrying the new work requirements for older Americans, those between the ages of 50 and 54, in the food assistance program.
Some Democrats were also outraged that the White House negotiated the deal’s changes to the landmark National Environmental Policy Act and approval of the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline natural gas project. Energy development is important to Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., but many others oppose it because it is not helpful in fighting climate change.
On Wall Street, stock prices fell on Wednesday.
In the Senate, Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell are working to pass it by the end of the week.
Schumer warned that “there is no room for error.”
Senators, who have remained largely on the sidelines for much of the negotiations, are pushing for amendments to reshape the package. But making any changes at this stage seemed unlikely with so little time until Monday’s deadline.
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AP White House correspondent Zeke Miller, AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Seung Min Kim and Jill Colvin and video reporter Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.
