AOn Wednesday evening the drama was over. America can breathe easy. And Kevin McCarthy too. After a final debate in the House of Representatives plenary, 314 lawmakers voted in favor of the bipartisan compromise to suspend the debt ceiling until early 2025. 117 voted against. 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats backed the compromise agreed upon by President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. Now the Senate must deal with the draft, which is then to be submitted to Biden for signature. Time is running out. Otherwise, the federal government would default on June 5, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned.
The fact that in the end fewer members of the Republican majority faction voted for the deal than members of the Democratic minority showed how much McCarthy had had to fight for his authority. He had to accept 71 dissenting votes from his own parliamentary group. 46 no votes came from the Democrat camp.
Biden thanks McCarthy for candid negotiations
In the debate, the spokesman once again campaigned insistently for the agreement: he said the deal meant the greatest savings in American history. Savings that the president didn’t really want to negotiate, he added. The Republicans would have prevented the Democrats from issuing another blank check. After the vote, Biden himself thanked McCarthy for the sincere negotiations. He also thanked minority leader Hakeem Jeffries for his leadership. After all, he had ensured that the number of Democrats who refused allegiance to the president was limited. Biden said neither side got everything they originally wanted from the compromise.
The compromise is intended to effectively freeze the size of the federal budget, which the Democrats actually wanted to increase. The individual budgets of several ministries and federal authorities would be adjusted for this. The Republicans were also able to enforce that recipients of certain social benefits must prove that they are gainfully employed. The Democrats originally wanted to increase state revenues by taxing the rich more heavily. Republicans denied that. This had caused frustration in the left wing of the Democrats. The savings in social programs were also criticized there. In the end, the main criticism was that the minority helped the Republicans to gain a majority.
Before that, there had been a procedural vote in the plenum, in which 29 Republicans had voted against their group leadership. The vote on the draft was only made possible by the fact that 52 Democrats had approved the motion. Jeffries had pointed out that he had wrested McCarthy from being able to secure a majority of his own, at least 150 members of his faction would have to vote in favor of the motion, otherwise he would receive no help from the Democrats. A majority of 60 members is required in the Senate to put the draft to a vote. The Republican minority leadership in the second chamber was confident that this would succeed. Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had announced that he would introduce the draft as soon as possible.
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