Race against time for US debt crisis bill in Congress

WASHINGTON  -The bill hammered out by US leaders to prevent the country from a catastrophic default on its debts will face one last hurdle this week: Passing Congress.

Top Republicans and Democrats scrambled Monday to secure congressional support for the measure, with President Joe Biden feeling “very good” about its prospects despite having just days left before the government starts running out of money.

The deal, finalized Sunday by Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy after weeks of frantic negotiations, faces opposition from the progressive and hard-right wings of their respective parties.

Ultra-conservative Republicans feel McCarthy should have secured far deeper spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling and allowing the government to keep borrowing money.

The left wing of the Democratic Party is equally unhappy that Biden agreed to any spending limits at all.

The House Rules Committee will meet Tuesday to set the parameters for the upcoming vote, now scheduled for Wednesday.

Delay tactics

Biden and McCarthy both say they believe the bill will pass the House and then move swiftly to the Senate.

“I never say I’m confident what the Congress is going to do. But I feel very good about it,” Biden said Monday, adding that he had spoken to lawmakers.

But organized dissent could force some nerve-shredding delays.

The key deadline is June 5 — when, according to Treasury estimates, the government will no longer have the funds required to pay all its debts and bills.

If that scenario morphs into a full-fledged default, the repercussions would be disastrous for the US and wider global economy.

The basic framework of the deal lifts the federal debt ceiling, which is currently $31.4 trillion, for two years — enough to get past the next presidential election in 2024.

In return, the Republicans secured some limits on federal spending over the same period.

As they finalized the text Sunday, Biden and McCarthy both went into hard-sell mode to shore up support in their parties.

Biden’s message to dissident Democrats, he said Monday: “Talk to me.”

Win, win

Both Biden and McCarthy were backed by vocal spin operations insisting the agreement clearly represented a victory for their side.

“You want to try to make it look like I made some compromise on the debt ceiling — I didn’t,” Biden told reporters.

McCarthy, for his part, touted the agreement as a “historic series of wins.”

But like Biden, McCarthy will have to quell members of his own party who aren’t keen on the bill.

“I want to raise the debt ceiling. It’d be irresponsible not to do it,” Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News Sunday.

“But what I will not do is adopt the Biden defense budget and call it a success,” Graham said, calling for bigger increases to the Pentagon’s budget than currently agreed.

“I will not be intimidated by June 5.”

In reality, the agreement represents a mutual climb down of sorts from Democratic and Republican negotiators.

Biden had initially refused to negotiate over spending issues as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, accusing the Republicans of taking the economy hostage.

And the big cuts that Republicans wanted are not there, although non-defense spending will remain effectively flat next year, and only rise nominally in 2025.

McCarthy’s wafer-thin majority in the House will require significant Democratic backing to balance out Republican dissent.

One Republican tweeted out a vomit emoji in response to the deal, with another calling it “an insult to the American people.”

At the same time, a member of the House Progressive Caucus, Ro Khanna, said a large number of fellow Democrats were still “in flux as to where they’re going to be on this.”

Democrats hold the majority in the Senate, but individual senators could try and hold up the bill with amendment votes that would bring the process perilously close to the June 5 deadline.

One element likely to rile Democratic environmental hawks was the surprise inclusion of a measure to accelerate completion of an oil pipeline project that has been stalled by green concerns.

Both the House and Senate are expected to return on Tuesday, after a long holiday weekend.