With 63 votes in favor and 36 against, the law passed one last legislative hurdle before ending up in the Oval Office for President Joe Biden to sign his signature.
The bill was approved by the Senate one day after the House of Representatives, in Republican hands, gave it approval and four days after The deadline has been set by the Treasury Department as the United States could have defaulted on its national debt.
“The United States can breathe easy because with this process we avoid default,” the House’s Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said shortly before the vote.
With these words, Schumer announced an agreement with a group of Wayward Republican Senators Shortly before they threatened to prolong the process if the Democrats did not commit to ensuring that the defense budget would increase more than envisaged in the agreement itself.
After his speech, he began a long process of proposing amendments, which however failed to prevent the bill from being ratified, as it had been approved the previous day by the House of Representatives.
The action suspends the debt ceiling’s the next two yearsuntil after the presidential election in November 2024. Specifically, the current debt limit of $31.4 trillion is suspended until January 1, 2025.
In contrast, the agreement reached over the weekend between the White House and House Republicans provides, among other things, for a cap on spending on programs funded by Congress in areas such as health, education, justice and environmental protection.
conditions
Under this agreement, non-defense spending will remain the same in fiscal year 2024 and increase by 1% in fiscal year 2025.
It also hardens Work requirements to access social benefits, such as food stamps, and cancel $28,000 million unspent dollars that were earmarked for pandemic assistance programs.
In parallel, cut out part of the new Funds allocated to the public treasury to reallocate it to non-defensive items and consider resuming college students’ debt payments.
After the vote, which ended around 11:00 p.m. (03:00 GMT on Wednesday), Schumer defended the project to achieve three “very important” goals: avoid suspension of payments, preserve most of the investments Biden has approved so far and eliminate On the most extreme Republican proposals.
“Tonight’s result is good news for our economy and for American families,” the Democrat said.
In the same sense, the same Bidenin a statement released shortly after the vote, said he hoped to sign off on the rule “as soon as possible” and announced he would be giving a speech on the subject on Friday.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also celebrated the agreement’s approval in a statement in which she also criticized the use of the debt ceiling for negotiation.
“I still believe that the faith and credibility of the United States should not be used as a bargaining chip,” the official said.
The Senate debate began around 2:30 pm this Thursday (6:30 pm GMT).
Soon after, Biden returned to the White House after attending an Air Force graduation ceremony in Colorado where he suffered a spectacular fall, and received a call from former President Barack Obama in which the former president inquired about votes in Congress, the government said.
Approval of the agreement in both houses of Congress was crucial for the country not to default on its public debt, after reaching the debt ceiling last January, the legal limit for the money the United States can borrow against its obligations.
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