Republican McCarthy secures his position with debt ceiling win
Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy celebrated "one of the best nights" since becoming a member of Congress on Wednesday, after navigating fierce hardline opposition to pass a debt ceiling bill containing federal spending limits that President Joe Biden vowed to resist.
Six months after he endured 15 humiliating floor votes just to be elected speaker, McCarthy proved capable of dragging Biden into negotiations over spending and other Republican priorities, and then marshaling two-thirds of his often fractious House Republican majority to enact bipartisan legislation.
"I thought it'd be almost impossible...Now, I found there's a whole new day here. We've woken them up," McCarthy told reporters after the vote, repeating one of his comments from the January night he was finally confirmed as speaker. The House approved by a 314-117 margin the bill, which lifts the government's $31.4 trillion debt ceiling in exchange for cutting non-defence discretionary spending and stiffening work requirements in assistance programs.
Yet it was a bruising victory for McCarthy. The bill gained 165 votes from Democrats, outnumbering the 149 from members of McCarthy's own Republican party.
The bill now goes to the narrowly Democratic-controlled Senate, which must enact it and get it to Biden's desk by June 5 to avoid a crippling US default.
McCarthy has so far succeeded in passing the bill without drawing direct verbal attacks from former President Donald Trump, who urged Republicans to push for a default if they were not able to extract sufficient concessions from Democrats.
Trump, who is seeking a return to the White House in 2024, had blasted top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling during Biden's first year in office. McConnell largely stayed in the background during these talks, which began to move forward after Biden agreed to one-on-one negotiations on May 9.
Avoiding Trump's ire appears to have protected McCarthy's standing with Republican voters nationally, some 44% of whom told a Reuters/Ipsos poll in May that they approve of his job performance, notably higher than McConnell's 29% approval rate.
The bill approved by the House on Wednesday would suspend the debt limit - essentially meaning that it no longer applies - through Jan. 1, 2025. That sets the stage for another showdown in the weeks following the 2024 presidential election.
Reuters
