On Thursday night, the Senate passed a bill to extend the debt ceiling until December, temporarily ending the Democrats’ self-created debt crisis just 11 days before the government’s deadline to default.
“The bill passed 50-48, with no Republicans joining Democrats in support. The vote came shortly after the chamber voted 61-38 on a procedural motion to break a filibuster, securing the bill’s advance,” NBC news reported. “The Republicans who voted in the affirmative were Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, John Cornyn of Texas, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Richard Shelby of Alabama and John Thune of South Dakota. Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C. and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. were absent.”
The deal would raise the limit by $480 billion, which is the amount U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says is required to push the debt crisis to Dec. 3.
The news comes the day after Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed the idea to Democrats.
In a statement on Wednesday, McConnell suggested the solution to the Democrats’ self-created crisis. He first noted that Senate Republicans had been warning Democrats that they would need to use the reconciliation process to raise the debt ceiling for nearly three months, but Democrats had refused to do so.
“The unified Democratic government had two and a half months to address the debt limit through reconciliation,” McConnell said in a statement. “Instead, they drifted to the doorstep of yet another self-created Democrat crisis. Whether through miscalculation or a deliberate effort to bully their own members into wrecking the Senate, top Democrats have risked adding a default crisis to the inflation crisis, border crisis, and Afghanistan crisis they have already created.”
McConnell then proposed a temporary suspension of the debt ceiling so the government could avoid default, and give Democrats more time to pass a permanent solution to their most recent crisis.
“Republicans remain the only party with a plan to prevent default. We have already made it clear we would assist in expediting the 304 reconciliation process for stand-alone debt limit legislation,” McConnell said. “To protect the American people from a near-term Democrat-created crisis, we will also allow Democrats to use normal procedures to pass an emergency debt limit extension at a fixed dollar amount to cover current spending levels into December. This will moot Democrats’ excuses about the time crunch they created and give the unified Democratic government more than enough time to pass standalone debt limit legislation through reconciliation. Alternatively, if Democrats abandon their efforts to ram through another historically reckless taxing and spending spree that will hurt families and help China, a more traditional bipartisan governing conversation could be possible.”
