Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
On Wednesday, House Democrats passed a bill that would raise the debt ceiling, but unflinching resistance by Republicans will likely spell its doom in the Senate.
In what might amount to a ceremonial undertaking, the Democrat-controlled House approved a measure that would suspend the nation’s debt ceiling through December 2022. The bill will now head to the Senate, where Republicans have uniformly pledged to require Democrats to pass debt ceiling legislation alone. The bill requires the support of at least 10 Republicans in order to meet the 60-vote threshold required for passage.
“The debt limit has long been a bipartisan issue,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on the floor of the House. “And you could talk about times when Democrats or Republicans voted against it in part. But it’s very hard to find a time when they said: ‘My vote will take down the debt limit.’ Democrats have never done that.”
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) told the House that Democrats were to blame for not including Republicans in debt or spending discussions:
Today’s debt ceiling issue is a political and economic crisis of the Democrats’ own making. They have known for two years this day was coming. They never even bothered to draft a budget for the government much less pass it. They never lifted a finger to start the bipartisan discussions on how to raise the debt ceiling while addressing America’s exploding national debt.
The bill passed 219-212, with just three Congressmen breaking party rank. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) voted in favor of the bill while Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) voted against.
This marks the second time in a week that the House has passed a bill that would raise the debt ceiling.
Earlier in the week, Republicans in the Senate used a procedural vote to kill H.R. 5305, which would have suspended the nation’s debt ceiling in a manner similar to the latest bill. Alternatively, the bill could be passed via reconciliations, which would require only a simple majority to pass, but House Democrats have bristled at that idea as they fear unrelated amendments could be added to the bill.
Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen has implored Congress to raise the debt ceiling for weeks and warns that without action the nation will hit its spending limit on Oct. 18. On Tuesday, she penned a letter to both houses of Congress, her second in a month, and restated her desire that the debt ceiling be raised now:
[It] is important to remember that estimates regarding how long our remaining extraordinary measures and cash may last can unpredictably shift forward or backward. This uncertainty underscores the critical importance of not waiting to raise or suspend the debt limit. The full faith and credit of the United States should not be put at risk.”