U.S. House votes to raise debt ceiling, impose Republican-demanded austerity measures

The Repub­li­can-con­trolled Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives tonight vot­ed some­what along the inverse of par­ty lines to pass a deal that once again rais­es the nation’s debt ceil­ing, but at a steep cost to the Amer­i­can peo­ple, in order to sat­is­fy the demands of mil­i­tant right wing Repub­li­cans who love spend­ing big bucks on the mil­i­tary but oppose invest­ing in the coun­try’s social contract.

By a vote of 314–117, the House adopt­ed the so-called Fis­cal Respon­si­bil­i­ty Act of 2023, which “increas­es the fed­er­al debt lim­it, estab­lish­es new dis­cre­tionary spend­ing lim­its, rescinds unob­lig­at­ed funds, and expands work require­ments for fed­er­al pro­grams,” as sum­ma­rized by Con­gress’ offi­cial leg­isla­tive website.

Although the bill is chock full of con­ces­sions to Repub­li­cans, it was Democ­rats who ulti­mate­ly put up most of the votes to pass it. 165 Democ­rats vot­ed yea on final pas­sage, while 46 vot­ed nay. 149 Repub­li­cans vot­ed yea and 71 vot­ed nay. Two Democ­rats did not vote; two Repub­li­cans also did not vote.

In the Pacif­ic North­west, the roll call was as follows:

Vot­ing Yea to pass the bill: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Marie Glue­senkamp Perez, Derek Kilmer, Kim Schri­er, Adam Smith, and Mar­i­lyn Strick­land (WA), Earl Blu­me­nauer and Andrea Sali­nas (OR), Mary Pel­to­la (AK); Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Dan New­house, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers (WA), Cliff Bentz, Lori Chavez-DeRe­mer (OR), Mike Simp­son (ID)

Vot­ing Nay to defeat the bill: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Prami­la Jaya­pal (WA), Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Val Hoyle (OR); Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Russ Fulcher (ID), Matt Rosendale, Ryan Zinke (MT)

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden praised the House­’s vote.

“Tonight, the House took a crit­i­cal step for­ward to pre­vent a first-ever default and pro­tect our country’s hard-earned and his­toric eco­nom­ic recov­ery. This bud­get agree­ment is a bipar­ti­san com­pro­mise. Nei­ther side got every­thing it want­ed. That’s the respon­si­bil­i­ty of gov­ern­ing. I want to thank Speak­er McCarthy and his team for nego­ti­at­ing in good faith, as well as Leader Jef­fries for his leadership.”

“This agree­ment is good news for the Amer­i­can peo­ple and the Amer­i­can econ­o­my,” Biden added. “It pro­tects key pri­or­i­ties and accom­plish­ments from the past two years, includ­ing his­toric invest­ments that are cre­at­ing good jobs across the coun­try. And, it hon­ors my com­mit­ment to safe­guard Amer­i­cans’ health care and pro­tect Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare, and Med­ic­aid. It pro­tects crit­i­cal pro­grams that mil­lions of hard­work­ing fam­i­lies, stu­dents, and vet­er­ans count on.”

“I have been clear that the only path for­ward is a bipar­ti­san com­pro­mise that can earn the sup­port of both par­ties. This agree­ment meets that test. I urge the Sen­ate to pass it as quick­ly as pos­si­ble so that I can sign it into law, and our coun­try can con­tin­ue build­ing the strongest econ­o­my in the world.”

Kevin McCarthy like­wise took a vic­to­ry lap after the vote, though The New York Times’ Carl Hulse observed McCarthy owed the suc­cess­ful out­come to his coun­ter­part, House Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Hakeem Jef­fries: “He man­aged to do so only with sig­nif­i­cant help from across the aisle, as Democ­rats res­cued him on a key pro­ce­dur­al vote and then pro­vid­ed the sup­port need­ed for passage.”

Sen­a­tor Mitch McConnell, the Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader, backs the leg­is­la­tion, and will pro­vide votes from his cau­cus to pass it in the Sen­ate, allow­ing Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer to not have to wor­ry about los­ing some of his members.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Jeff Merkley of Ore­gon announced today in a thought­ful state­ment that he’s a no, for exam­ple, and he’ll prob­a­bly be joined by oth­er pro­gres­sive sen­a­tors like Eliz­a­beth War­ren and Bernie Sanders in oppos­ing the bill.

Jaya­pal released a lengthy state­ment explain­ing why she vot­ed no. It is an excel­lent state­ment and we rec­om­mend read­ing it in its entirety:

This was a deal nego­ti­at­ed while the extreme MAGA Repub­li­cans held the Amer­i­can peo­ple hostage. It is absolute­ly unac­cept­able that they refused to com­ply with their con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tion of lift­ing the debt ceil­ing, as has been done by Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats 78 times. We appre­ci­ate the Pres­i­dent and White House nego­ti­at­ing on behalf of the peo­ple giv­en the circumstances.

I am also very grate­ful to Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Jef­fries for being a strong voice against MAGA extrem­ists and FOR the Amer­i­can peo­ple. I am clear that we sim­ply could not allow the coun­try to default — that is who we are as respon­si­ble Democ­rats nego­ti­at­ing with an extreme par­ty that was will­ing to take this coun­try over the cliff with a cat­a­stroph­ic default.

How­ev­er, at the same time, we must be clear that this hostage-tak­ing is absolute­ly unac­cept­able and that there will be very real con­se­quences for work­ing peo­ple and poor peo­ple who will now be forced to resume crip­pling stu­dent debt pay­ments, pre­dom­i­nant­ly Black and Brown women who will be kicked off food assis­tance because they will be forced into work­ing as they enter their senior years, and peo­ple every­where who will be forced to live with more envi­ron­men­tal injus­tice. They are all the ones being forced to pay for this hostage-tak­ing by Repub­li­cans who are now clear­ly on the record of want­i­ng to pro­tect the wealth­i­est indi­vid­u­als and cor­po­ra­tions at the expense of poor and work­ing people.

This leg­is­la­tion puts unnec­es­sary hur­dles between poor peo­ple, includ­ing old­er Amer­i­cans, and nutri­tion assistance.

It claws back more than $21 bil­lion in fund­ing meant to ensure the wealthy and cor­po­ra­tions pay their fair share in tax­es, caps any increas­es in non-defense spend­ing at a time when infla­tion has been on the rise, also effec­tive­ly low­er­ing the base­line for rais­ing non-defense spend­ing in future years, removes the President’s abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue the stu­dent loan pay­ment pause, and gives pol­lut­ing cor­po­ra­tions a greater role in prepar­ing their own envi­ron­men­tal reviews, allow­ing them to skew nec­es­sary data.

In Wash­ing­ton State, we may see real effects on reduc­tions of Emer­gency Relief Funds for edu­ca­tion and on the imple­men­ta­tion of new SNAP require­ments that will dis­rupt the process for SNAP recip­i­ents and cre­ate new churn in the sys­tem. As a state that has led on cli­mate change, we also know that there is a very con­cern­ing prece­dent set by the approvals of the Moun­tain Val­ley Pipeline.

While the Biden admin­is­tra­tion was able to walk back many of the extreme GOP’s worst ideas, we should nev­er have got­ten to this place. This was a man­u­fac­tured cri­sis where Repub­li­cans took our econ­o­my hostage – and it sets a very dan­ger­ous prece­dent – that Repub­li­cans can ignore the rule of law, ignore our oblig­a­tion to pay our debts, and ignore the needs of our con­stituents, all to advance their polit­i­cal priorities.

This is not the way that Con­gress should do busi­ness. This process pushed our econ­o­my to the brink of cat­a­stro­phe and could have dev­as­tat­ed work­ing fam­i­lies across this coun­try. I vot­ed no today to reg­is­ter my objec­tions in both pol­i­cy and prin­ci­ple and to ensure that peo­ple across the coun­try know we are stand­ing up for them and against these extreme MAGA Repub­li­cans. We can­not allow this to become the norm in future nego­ti­a­tions and as soon as Democ­rats retake the major­i­ty, I will con­tin­ue advo­cat­ing to give the Depart­ment of Trea­sury the abil­i­ty to raise the debt ceiling.

We strong­ly agree with Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jaya­pal’s com­ments and thank her for so artic­u­late­ly describ­ing the harm­ful pro­vi­sions con­tained with­in this bill.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene, who rep­re­sents NPI’s home con­gres­sion­al dis­trict, the 1st, vot­ed the oth­er way; here’s what she had to say about her vote:

The bipar­ti­san bud­get agree­ment that I sup­port­ed today will pro­tect Amer­i­can fam­i­lies and our econ­o­my from a dev­as­tat­ing default on our nation’s bills. It also will shield our vet­er­ans, seniors, law enforce­ment, and schools from the worst of the extreme House Repub­li­can demands they issued while hold­ing our econ­o­my hostage.

This deal is far from perfect.

Com­pro­mise means that no one gets every­thing they want in a nego­ti­a­tion. The worse out­come here was default.

I thank Pres­i­dent Biden and Leader Jef­fries for their work to reach this deal and pass it through the House. The Sen­ate must imme­di­ate­ly take up this leg­is­la­tion and get it to the president’s desk.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­i­lyn Strick­land also vot­ed yea; here’s her statement:

Tonight, I vot­ed in favor of the Fis­cal Respon­si­bil­i­ty Act to pro­tect the full faith and cred­it of the Unit­ed States and avoid a cat­a­stroph­ic default that would hurt our economy.

I vot­ed to pro­tect fam­i­lies, jobs, seniors, vet­er­ans, chil­dren and our econ­o­my from irre­versible harm and ensure that Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare, and Med­ic­aid ben­e­fits are intact. I call on my Sen­ate col­leagues to swift­ly pass this bill and send it to Pres­i­dent Biden’s desk to ensure the U.S. econ­o­my remains strong and stable.

If the Sen­ate amends the leg­is­la­tion, it would need to return to the House for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion. Sen­a­tor Schumer has said he would like to avoid that, which will require the rejec­tion of any amend­ments pro­posed in the Senate.