House to act on debt ceiling next week

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said on Friday that the lower chamber will be taking action to suspend the debt limit next week amid a looming deadline.

In a letter to lawmakers on Friday, Hoyer said the House will vote on the debt limit and on a continuing resolution to fund the government. He did not say whether the two issues would be joined as one bill. 

The Treasury Department is now using what are known as “extraordinary measures” to prevent the U.S. from defaulting on its debt. It has said it will no longer be able to take such steps at some point in October, creating a deadline for Congress. 

The government must have a new funding bill by the end of the month or it will shut down.

Republicans in the Senate are not expected to provide votes to raise the debt ceiling, creating new problems for President Biden and Senate Democrats.

While Democrats could pass a continuing resolution including language addressing the debt ceiling without GOP support in the House, the party would need at least 10 votes from Republican senators to advance the legislation in the evenly-split upper chamber.

There have been discussions about adding the debt ceiling hike to a government-funding measure to put more pressure on the GOP to back the vote, essentially forcing Republicans to address the debt ceiling in order to keep the government running.

Democrats also have the option of raising the debt limit through reconciliation, which allows them to bypass the Senate filibuster. However, party leaders have insisted Republicans work with them to address the debt limit, pointing to the multiple instances both parties did so under the prior administration.

“Even when President Trump was in office, Democrats worked three times with Republicans to suspend the debt ceiling, because it was the right and obvious thing to do,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said earlier this week.

However, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has dismissed calls for Republicans to help address the limit in opposition to a forthcoming $3.5 multi-trillion-dollar spending plan Democrats are working to pass using reconciliation.

“Democrats keep boasting about how wild and revolutionary their partisan vision is! So, our friends across the aisle should not expect traditional bipartisan borrowing to finance their nontraditional reckless taxing and spending spree. That’s not how this works,” McConnell has said.