U.S. House approves debt ceiling “deal”

A pho­ny cri­sis has been avert­ed at a great cost.

The U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed this evening to approve the debt ceil­ing “deal” endorsed by Barack Oba­ma, John Boehn­er, Mitch McConnell, Har­ry Reid, and Nan­cy Pelosi. The Sen­ate is expect­ed to fol­low suit tomor­row. There were two hun­dred and six­ty-nine ayes; the nays num­bered one hun­dred and six­ty one.

Democ­rats were even­ly divid­ed — nine­ty-five sup­port­ed the deal, and nine­ty-five vot­ed against it. The Pacif­ic North­west­’s del­e­ga­tion did not break along par­ty lines.

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats Inslee, Larsen, Dicks, Schrad­er, Wu; Repub­li­cans Reichert, McMor­ris-Rodgers, Hast­ings, Her­rera Beut­ler, Simp­son, Walden, Young.

Vot­ing Nay: Democ­rats McDer­mott, Smith, Blu­me­nauer, DeFazio; Repub­li­cans Rehberg, Labrador.

Oppo­si­tion came most­ly from pro­gres­sive Democ­rats and con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans, who dis­like the pro­pos­al for dif­fer­ent reasons.

Not long before he vot­ed, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim McDer­mott released a short state­ment on Face­book sum­ma­riz­ing his opposition.

“I’ve heard from lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of you today urg­ing a no vote on the debt deal,” McDer­mott wrote. “This was a man­u­fac­tured cri­sis and the bill doesn’t help cre­ate jobs or help the mid­dle class. We need to raise the debt ceil­ing, but we’re not doing it the right way. I want to reas­sure all of you that I intend to vote “nay” on the debt deal — a deal that meets the Tea Par­ty’s inter­ests, not America’s.”

We thank Rep­re­sen­ta­tives McDer­mott, Smith, Blu­me­nauer, and DeFazio for say­ing no to this shame­ful, irre­spon­si­ble legislation.

In the words of for­mer Sen­a­tor Russ Fein­gold:

The debt ceil­ing deal should remove any doubt of the pow­er cor­po­rate inter­ests have over our gov­ern­ment. That deal, ham­mered out by the pres­i­dent and Repub­li­can Con­gres­sion­al lead­ers, places the bur­den of reduc­ing our long-term bud­get prob­lems on aver­age Amer­i­cans, while the wealth­i­est indi­vid­u­als and cor­po­ra­tions are giv­en a free pass.

Amer­i­cans are will­ing to bear their share of the bur­den of address­ing our nation’s long-term bud­get prob­lems, but those sac­ri­fices should be shared by all.

The U.S. Sen­ate will sup­pos­ed­ly be vot­ing on the debt ceil­ing deal tomor­row at 9 AM Pacif­ic. Then, sen­a­tors will start head­ing out of town, because their vaca­tion time is appar­ent­ly more impor­tant than prob­lems like the cri­sis at the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) which our own Sen­a­tor Cantwell has been try­ing to call atten­tion to. That will thus go unre­solved for at least anoth­er month.