U.S. Senate sends bill to raise debt ceiling, satisfy Republican ransom demands to Biden

The Unit­ed States Sen­ate vot­ed tonight to go along with the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in pass­ing leg­is­la­tion nego­ti­at­ed by Speak­er Kevin McCarthy and Pres­i­dent Biden that rais­es the debt ceil­ing in return for impos­ing Repub­li­can-demand­ed aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures on the coun­try’s essen­tial pub­lic services.

The so-called Fis­cal Respon­si­bil­i­ty Act received yea votes from almost two-thirds of the Sen­ate, pass­ing 63–36. Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Eliz­a­beth War­ren, Jeff Merkley, Ed Markey, and John Fet­ter­man vot­ed no, along with inde­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders of Ver­mont and thir­ty-one Repub­li­can senators.

Pas­sage of H.R. 3746 averts what would have been a self-inflict­ed finan­cial cat­a­stro­phe brought about by mil­i­tant right wing Repub­li­cans obsessed with dis­man­tling the coun­try’s social con­tract, but at a steep cost to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. The deal con­tains a par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­gust­ing give­away to West Vir­gini­a’s fos­sil fuels lov­ing Joe Manchin, who secured a pro­vi­sion requir­ing the con­struc­tion of a pol­lut­ing pipeline in his home state that has been held up in the courts.

Pres­i­dent Biden plans to sign it into law quick­ly, like­ly some­time tomorrow.

The Depart­ment of the Trea­sury has pre­vi­ous­ly said that its “extra­or­di­nary mea­sures” would be exhaust­ed as of June 5th, which is this com­ing Mon­day, so Biden had implored Con­gress to get him the bill by the end of this week, which it has now done. This neces­si­tat­ed the Sen­ate’s rejec­tion of a num­ber of amend­ments, sev­er­al of which were pro­posed by hard­line ultra MAGA senators.

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as follows:

Vot­ing Yea to pass the bill: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell (WA), Ron Wyden (OR), Jon Tester (MT); Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Lisa Murkows­ki (AK)

Vot­ing Nay to defeat the bill: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Jeff Merkley (OR), Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Mike Crapo and Jim Risch (ID), Steve Daines (MT); Dan Sul­li­van (AK)

Mitch McConnell pro­vid­ed sev­en­teen Repub­li­can votes for the bill, includ­ing his own. Chuck Schumer deliv­ered forty-six votes, which is more than twice as many.

“Tonight, Sen­a­tors from both par­ties vot­ed to pro­tect the hard-earned eco­nom­ic progress we have made and pre­vent a first-ever default by the Unit­ed States,” said Pres­i­dent Biden. “Togeth­er, they demon­strat­ed once more that Amer­i­ca is a nation that pays its bills and meets its oblig­a­tions — and always will be. I want to thank Leader Schumer and Leader McConnell for quick­ly pass­ing the bill.”

“No one gets every­thing they want in a nego­ti­a­tion, but make no mis­take: this bipar­ti­san agree­ment is a big win for our econ­o­my and the Amer­i­can people.”

“It pro­tects the core pil­lars of my Invest­ing in Amer­i­ca agen­da that is cre­at­ing good jobs across the coun­try, fuel­ing a resur­gence in man­u­fac­tur­ing, rebuild­ing our infra­struc­ture, and advanc­ing clean energy.”

“It safe­guards peo­ples’ health care and retire­ment secu­ri­ty, pro­tect­ing bedrock pro­grams like Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare, and Med­ic­aid. It pro­tects vital invest­ments in hard­work­ing fam­i­lies that help make our coun­try strong—from child care and edu­ca­tion, to pub­lic safe­ty and Meals on Wheels. It pro­tects my stu­dent debt relief plan for hard­work­ing bor­row­ers. And it hon­ors America’s sacred oblig­a­tion to our vet­er­ans by ful­ly fund­ing vet­er­ans’ med­ical care.”

“Our work is far from fin­ished, but this agree­ment is a crit­i­cal step for­ward, and a reminder of what’s pos­si­ble when we act in the best inter­ests of our coun­try. I look for­ward to sign­ing this bill into law as soon as pos­si­ble and address­ing the Amer­i­can peo­ple direct­ly tomorrow.”

“When the full faith and cred­it of the Unit­ed States was on the line, Pres­i­dent Biden answered the call and deliv­ered a his­toric bipar­ti­san bud­get agree­ment for the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” said Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee Chair Jaime Harrison.

“In a tes­ta­ment to his expe­ri­ence and lead­er­ship, Pres­i­dent Biden suc­cess­ful­ly nego­ti­at­ed a deal that pro­tect­ed key pri­or­i­ties and the his­toric eco­nom­ic gains we have made over the last two years.”

“This agree­ment pro­tects the health care of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, strength­ens our eco­nom­ic recov­ery, pre­vents cru­el cuts to the pro­grams that mil­lions of Amer­i­can fam­i­lies rely on, and ful­ly funds med­ical care for veterans.”

“Pres­i­dent Biden was elect­ed in part because of his abil­i­ty to work across the aisle and get things done for the Amer­i­can peo­ple, and, once again, he deliv­ered. He did his job to ensure Amer­i­ca avoids an unprece­dent­ed default that could have led to a reces­sion, mil­lions of jobs lost, dev­as­tat­ed retire­ment accounts, and high­er bor­row­ing costs for Amer­i­can families.”

“While these nego­ti­a­tions made clear that MAGA Repub­li­cans will stop at noth­ing – includ­ing hold­ing our econ­o­my hostage – to enact their unpop­u­lar and dan­ger­ous agen­da, the Amer­i­can peo­ple also now see that Pres­i­dent Biden and Democ­rats will con­tin­ue to find a way for­ward and nev­er stop work­ing to deliv­er for them.”

That hostage-tak­ing was cit­ed by our very own Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray in her com­ments on the Sen­ate floor as very destruc­tive for the country.

“Instead of work­ing through the bud­get and appro­pri­a­tions process — as we do every year — to craft our nation’s bud­get and deter­mine how we spend mon­ey, House Repub­li­cans just decid­ed they would threat­en to tank our econ­o­my and force the U.S. into default to extract par­ti­san con­ces­sions,” stat­ed Sen­a­tor Mur­ray. “We have heard House Repub­li­cans lead­ers and even the leader of the Repub­li­can Par­ty talk open­ly about tak­ing our econ­o­my and the Amer­i­can peo­ple ‘hostage.’”

“For House Repub­li­cans, this was nev­er tru­ly about the debt any­way,” said Mur­ray. “Repub­li­cans added tril­lions to the debt under Pres­i­dent Trump through tax give­aways for bil­lion­aires and giant cor­po­ra­tions. But they refuse to even talk about ask­ing bil­lion­aires to pay at least as much in tax­es as a fire­fight­er or a nurse.”

And sad­ly, thanks to Mur­ray’s col­leagues Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sine­ma, Democ­rats failed to rescind the Trump tax cuts, per­ma­nent­ly abol­ish the debt ceil­ing, or lock in the COVID-era improve­ments to the coun­try’s social con­tract that Con­gress made as part of the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan, like the child tax cred­it. Democ­rats had con­trol of both cham­bers last bien­ni­um, but could not prop­er­ly use those majori­ties due to Manchin and Sine­ma’s per­fid­i­ous behavior.

Sen­a­tor Jeff Merkley of Ore­gon was one of the few Democ­rats who refused to back the deal, con­clud­ing that it would be against his val­ues to do so.

“Since the text of this leg­is­la­tion was released, I have immersed myself in the details and lis­tened care­ful­ly to everyone’s points of view,” said Merkley pri­or to the floor debate. “I appre­ci­ate the diver­si­ty of opin­ion with­in the Con­gress and with­in my own cau­cus. Still, I can­not in good con­science vote for this bill.”

“This bill breaks with recent, estab­lished, and bipar­ti­san prac­tice, cut­ting pro­grams that are the foun­da­tions for thriv­ing fam­i­lies — includ­ing health care, hous­ing, and education—to increase mil­i­tary spending.”

“In addi­tion, this bill sets two tru­ly hor­rif­ic prece­dents: It com­plete­ly exempts the Moun­tain Val­ley Pipeline (MVP) from fol­low­ing envi­ron­men­tal law, even though the com­pa­ny build­ing the pipeline is an egre­gious vio­la­tor that has racked up more than five hun­dred vio­la­tions in two states.”

“In addi­tion, the bill dic­tates the court juris­dic­tion for the MVP should there be addi­tion­al legal chal­lenges. This pro­found­ly under­mines the integri­ty of our judi­cia­ry. For Con­gress to — by law — move a court case from one juris­dic­tion to anoth­er, to pro­vide a spe­cial favor to a pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tion, is fun­da­men­tal­ly cor­rupt. This is a line we should nev­er cross. The pipeline itself is an assault against a sus­tain­able plan­et. We must rec­og­nize that fos­sil gas is just as dam­ag­ing as coal. Pre­tend­ing oth­er­wise is lead­ing us to cli­mate catastrophe.”

“Final­ly, this bill con­tains changes to bedrock envi­ron­men­tal law that will allow fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies to evade respon­si­bil­i­ty and accountability.”

“It allows com­pa­nies to write their own envi­ron­men­tal impact eval­u­a­tions. It changes the stan­dards for accept­able sci­ence and data. It exempts entire pipeline projects from fed­er­al envi­ron­men­tal protections.

“I ful­ly rec­og­nize that a debt default would be a dis­as­ter for work­ing fam­i­lies and must nev­er be allowed to hap­pen. It’s uncon­scionable that MAGA Repub­li­cans and Speak­er McCarthy were will­ing to enter­tain dri­ving the econ­o­my over the default cliff at all. How­ev­er, yield­ing to this black­mail only guar­an­tees that Repub­li­cans will use the debt lim­it to hold Amer­i­ca hostage time and time again.”

“We must end the hostage-tak­ing, either by pass­ing leg­is­la­tion like my Pro­tect Our CREDIT Act or through the Pres­i­dent exer­cis­ing his exec­u­tive pow­er, such as the use of the 14th Amendment.”

“In sum, there is vir­tu­al­ly noth­ing in this bill that match­es what the peo­ple of Ore­gon care about, and a whole lot of stuff that will hurt them. I can’t throw them under the bus. I can­not in good con­science sup­port this legislation.”

We agree with Sen­a­tor Merkley’s assess­ment of this bill and thank him for vot­ing no. There at least need­ed to be some Demo­c­ra­t­ic nays on this roll call, and the good peo­ple of the Pacif­ic North­west who oppose the cor­rup­tion and rot con­tained in this leg­is­la­tion were rep­re­sent­ed thanks to Sen­a­tor Merkley.