Agreement to raise US debt ceiling: The storm has not stopped

US President Joe Biden on May 28 finalized a budget deal with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to suspend the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling until January 1, 2025. According to Mr. Biden, the deal is ready to move to Congress for a vote.

“This is good news for the American people,” Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House after a call with Mr. McCarthy to finalize the deal they reached on the evening of May 27 after weeks of tense negotiations.

Reaching a deal is one thing, but overcoming political divisions and time-consuming procedural hurdles to pass legislation before June 5 to prevent the US from defaulting on its debt is an entirely different challenge.

Strongly opposed

The deal reached on May 27 faced opposition from members of both parties in the House, raising doubts about whether it would have the votes needed to pass Congress and avert a default before June 5.

Conservative Republicans said the bill did not produce the scale of spending cuts they wanted, while progressive Democrats expressed discomfort with expanded requirements for food assistance programs and other White House concessions.

Asked if he had to make too many concessions to win approval from Republicans, President Joe Biden simply replied: “No.” Photo: The Guardian

“This deal is insane. Raising the debt ceiling by $4 trillion with virtually no cuts is not what we agreed to. I will not vote to bankrupt our country. The American people deserve better,” Rep. Ralph Norman wrote on Twitter.

Representative Ralph Norman, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said he would not support the bill and hoped Republicans would vote it down. “All we need to do is put it back on the table. No deal is better than a bad deal,” Norman said in a sharp rebuke of the new bill.

The new deal would raise the debt ceiling until January 1, 2025, cap spending in the 2024 and 2025 budgets, recover unused Covid-19 relief funds, speed up the permitting process for some energy projects and impose additional work requirements on food assistance programs for poor Americans.

“This is a terrible policy. I told the president that this is telling poor people and people who are struggling that we don’t trust them,” said Democrat Pramila Jayapal, referring to the new requirements for people receiving food assistance and other public benefit programs.

The question remains open.

Republicans control the House of Representatives by a margin of 222-213, while Democrats control the Senate by a margin of 51-49. Those numbers mean moderates in both parties would have to support the bill if it were opposed by hardliners in one or both parties.

“Nobody gets everything they want, but it is the responsibility of the regulators to avoid the threat of a catastrophic default,” Biden said as he urged lawmakers to ratify the deal.

Asked if he had made too many concessions to win approval from Republicans, Mr. Biden simply replied: “No.”

Meanwhile, Mr McCarthy dismissed threats of opposition within his own party, saying more than 95% of Republicans were “extremely excited” about the deal.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said more than 95% of Republicans were “extremely excited” about the deal he and President Joe Biden reached on the evening of May 27. Photo: Bloomberg

Some Republicans have also been open to the deal. Rep. Dusty Johnson, one of the lead Republican negotiators on the deal, said it was only the most conservatives who opposed it, and those votes never really mattered.

The deal needs 218 votes in the 435-member House to pass, then it will go to the Senate before reaching Mr Biden's desk.

Opposition from the most conservative members of the House was not unexpected, and the White House has said it could take as many as 100 House Democratic votes for a debt ceiling deal to move forward.

Whether the deal will pass Congress remains an open question, Biden said. “I don’t know if McCarthy will get the votes. I hope he does,” the president said .

Nguyen Tuyet (According to USA Today, NY Times, Reuters)

Source: https://www.nguoiduatin.vn/thoa-thuan-nang-tran-no-cong-my-song-gio-chua-ngung-a610086.html