Debt ceiling bill advances to final House vote after McCarthy gets help from Democrats

WASHINGTON — A bill to raise the debt ceiling and cut government spending passed a key procedural hurdle in the House on Wednesday, clearing its path to a final vote on the floor later in the evening. 

The resolution to begin formal debate on the Fiscal Responsibility Act passed by a vote of 241-187, with 52 Democrats siding with Republicans, and 29 Republicans voting no, along with most Democrats.

But as the vote stretched on well past its time limit, it became clear that GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy would need Democratic votes in order to pass the measure with a simple majority. 

Congress is rushing to approve the measure by Monday, the earliest date the U.S. risks a first-ever sovereign default. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said federal funds could dry up in the coming days unless lawmakers raise the borrowing limit.

Failure to do so would upset global financial markets, spark job losses in the U.S. and jeopardize vital government benefits for millions of Americans. To prevent what Yellen has called a potential “catastrophe,” congressional leaders will need to win support for the bill in both chambers of a divided Congress.

Further complicating the support and opposition to the bill Wednesday was a surprise finding from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which released its assessment late Tuesday of the bill’s impact on federal debt and deficits.

The CBO determined that, contrary to Republicans’ stated intent, the bill’s new work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would not save any money over 10 years, but would instead actually cost money.

That is because in order to get the White House to agree to new work requirements for able-bodied, childless adults, Republicans agreed to add new exemptions from work requirements for especially vulnerable groups, like veterans and homeless people.

If these exemptions go into effect at the same time as the new work requirements, rather than push people off of food stamps because they fail to meet the work requirements, CBO found that the net effect of the bill will be to enroll an additional 78,000 a month in the program from the exempted categories, like veterans.

Republican party leaders pushed back, and claimed on a hastily arranged conference call that the CBO was incorrectly counting people who were already exempt from work requirements.

But Republican opponents of the bill quickly seized on the CBO finding to argue that the bill betrayed its own conservative principles.

“You can’t make this stuff up… The disastrous Biden-McCarthy deal expands welfare,” Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., tweeted Wednesday.

Still, GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry, one of the negotiators on the deal, told CNBC on Wednesday that he believed the bill has enough votes to pass.

The legislation is the result of a deal reached between McCarthy and President Joe Biden, which essentially hands conservatives several ideological policy victories in exchange for their votes to raise the debt ceiling beyond next year’s presidential election and into 2025.

Most importantly, the bill would avert a potentially catastrophic U.S. debt default that the Treasury Department said will likely occur next week if Congress does not act to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.

As Biden departed Wednesday for Colorado, he appeared to accept that the fate of the bill was out of his hands.

“God willing, by the time I land, Congress will have acted, the House will have acted and we’ll be one step closer” to avoiding default, he said.

This is a developing story, please check back for updates.