Debt ceiling vote recap: McCarthy lauds deal, pledges to get more work done

As he wrapped up his post-vote press conference, Speaker Kevin McCarthy was asked if he and former President Trump had discussed the debt ceiling legislation.

“I speak to President Trump, but we didn’t talk much about the bill,” McCarthy said, followed by: “We don’t want to end on that question. Let’s end on something else.” And he asked reporters if they’d be there when he left his office.

Declaring “we can’t keep doing the same thing” and “with only one party,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he’s going to ask Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries “to nominate and appoint people who will be serious” for a commission to look at duplication in the budget.

McCarthy said a similar effort was put together after World War II when debt hit 102 percent of GDP.

In late March, the prospects of President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) coming together for a deal to raise the debt ceiling that both men found palatable looked dim.

Biden on March 28 flatly rejected a call from McCarthy for a meeting, instead urging the top House Republican to release a budget proposal before they could have a conversation in person.

Read the full story here.

– Brett Samuels

In remarks after the House vote, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) took a victory lap, touting the cuts to IRS funding, unspent COVID money and more that were passed in the debt ceiling legislation.

Noting that his negotiators got a look at 11 percent of President Biden’s budget, McCarthy vowed his work wasn’t done.

“I’m waking up tomorrow going after everything we didn’t get here today,” the Speaker said.

By a vote of 314-117, the House has passed the debt ceiling bill. It moves next to the Senate.

With the vote clock at zero, the yeas have well over the number needed for passage. But the vote is not closed, and several dozen votes are outstanding.

In a 15-minute vote period, with about four minutes to go, there were over 190 votes outstanding. An overwhelming number of them are Democrats.

Reps. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and Richard Neal (D-Mass.) closed debate on the bill with impassioned speeches reflective of partisan viewpoints.

The House is now headed into a 15-minute vote.

Democrats have 10 minutes left of debate. Republicans have 4 minutes.

Speaking on the House floor while the chamber debated the debt ceiling compromise, Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared, “Tonight, we’re gonna give America hope.”

“Tonight we’re gonna vote for the largest savings in American history, over $2.1 trillion,” he continued.

He also took the opportunity to address those who’ve said they’ll vote against the bill because they take issue with its contents.

“If I took that philosophy, I would never vote yes.”

A final vote is expected around 8:30 p.m.

Conservative Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says he will force the Senate to vote this week on cutting total federal spending by 5 percent in each of the next two years, a proposal that would include Social Security and Medicare. 

It’s an uncomfortable vote for Senate Republicans and it divides their conference. 

Talking about cuts to Social Security has been called the “third rail” of politics. 

A “no” vote opens GOP senators to criticism from conservatives who say that policymakers who exempt Social Security from reform are not serious about balancing the budget. 

A “yes” vote risks alienating seniors and other voters who are worried about seeing their Social Security and Medicare benefits cut. 

Paul says that under his plan lawmakers could decide to exempt Social Security and Medicare from cuts but they would have to fit those programs under the strict spending caps laid out in his “conservative alternative” to the debt-limit deal negotiated by President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).  

— Alexander Bolton

The House is about an hour away from voting on the debt ceiling deal struck between Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Biden.

You can read the bill here.

The House has begun debate on the debt ceiling bill.

The rule the chamber agreed to earlier provides one hour for debate, teeing the measure up for a final vote around 8:30 p.m.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) confirmed Wednesday evening that he will oppose the deal between President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to raise the debt ceiling, citing its provisions overhauling the energy permitting process.

“I will not support a deal to fast-track dirty fossil fuel projects at the expense of environmental justice. I will not give polluters a Get Out of Jail Free card. I will vote NO on the default deal,” the Massachusetts Democrat tweeted Wednesday.

Progressives in Congress have raised concerns that provisions of the measure, which cleared a key House procedural hurdle Wednesday, would undermine the National Environmental Protection Act with provisions aimed at simplifying the permitting process.

The measure would also approve the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a pet project of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), which has similarly drawn the ire of progressives but also moderates like Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).

Read more here.

— Zack Budryk

The House Freedom Caucus took an official position against the debt ceiling compromise bill, formalizing the resistance to the bill voiced by many of its members.

There are an estimated 30 to 40 members of the caucus, many of whom have already said they will not vote for the bill.

The House Freedom Caucus proposes that Republicans try to force President Biden back to the negotiating table to secure deeper spending cuts. But even with that position, many members of the hard-line conservative group expect the bill to pass Wednesday evening.

— Emily Brooks

A potential fallback plan raised by some House conservatives to hold up the passage of a bipartisan bill to avert a federal default this week is drawing a cool reception in the upper chamber.

While a few hard-line House Republicans looked to their upper chamber colleagues to stall the debt ceiling deal as they called for leadership to find alternatives, those Senate allies were not quick to join the scheme.

“They should be slowing it down,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said of Republican senators Tuesday. “They should be tanking it as much as they can as well.”

Read more here.

– Aris Folley

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on Wednesday slammed the debt limit bill headed for passage in the House as a “fake response to burdensome debt” and declared he “will emphatically vote no.” 

Lee warned the nation’s debt, which currently sits at just under $32 trillion, “will soon escalate to $36 trillion under this awful deal.”

“One cannot help be seized by a sense of awful foreboding,” he said on the Senate floor. “Instead of confronting this existential threat head-on, this deal is wracked with complacency and false cowardly compromise.

“It represents the victory of expediency over integrity. I cannot support it,” he said.  

Read more here.

— Alexander Bolton

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) “should be concerned” about a motion to remove him after the debt ceiling deal he struck with President Biden moves through Congress.

“Yeah, I think he should be concerned,” Buck said about McCarthy’s future as Speaker, adding that he was not saying that enough votes exist to remove him from the role.

“And so, after this vote — and he will win the vote tonight — but after this vote, we will have discussions about whether there should be a motion to vacate or not,” he continued. 

Read the full story

House progressives are expressing dismay over the debt limit deal hammered out by President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), worried that it could set a dangerous precedent for GOP-steamrolling in the future.

A number of the left wing’s heavyweights, including Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), have come out against the deal on principle, which is expected to head to the floor for a vote as soon as this evening. 

While progressive lawmakers have been careful not to outright criticize Biden, many of them are frustrated that he didn’t invoke the 14th Amendment as a way to keep the government afloat while also preserving benefits for working people they had sought. 

Now, they’re warning that it could spell trouble for future negotiations.

Read the full story here.

— Hanna Trudo

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) wasn’t one of the 50 Democrats who crossed over to vote for the rule governing debate on the debt ceiling bill, but he quickly slammed Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for how the vote unfolded.

“How embarrassing for Kevin McCarthy,” Swalwell tweeted. “He struck a deal with President Biden and couldn’t even deliver votes on his own side to ensure we could vote later tonight to pay America’s bills.”

“He may have the title of Speaker but he doesn’t have the job,” Swalwell quipped.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) laughed when NBC News asked him about House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) waiting until the last minute to give Democrats the green light to vote for the rule.

“I probably would’ve done the same thing,” McCarthy said. “Well played.”

And after hanging back, more than 50 Democrats bucked convention to deliver the last-minute votes to push the rule over the finish line.

— Emily Brooks

Twenty-nine Republicans voted against the rule governing debate on the debt ceiling legislation.

House Republicans on Wednesday passed the rule governing debate on bipartisan legislation to lift the debt ceiling, a procedural hurdle that paves the way for final passage of the bill later in the day — but not without an emergency assist from Democrats.

Lawmakers approved the rule in a vote of 241-187, just days before June 5, the day Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the U.S. could plunge into default if the borrowing limit is not raised.

But the vote was not without a good deal of drama.

Read the full story here.

– Mike Lillis and Mychael Schnell

House passes rule, setting up final debt vote for tonight.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says he hopes the Senate will pass legislation to raise the debt limit Thursday or Friday as conservative Republican senators now say they won’t hold the bill up as long as they get to vote on amendments. 

“I can tell you what I hope happens is that those who have amendments, if given votes, will yield back time so that we can finish this Thursday or Friday and sooth the country and sooth the markets,” McConnell told reporters Wednesday.  

– Alexander Bolton 

The House has begun voting on the rule governing the bill, and some Republican opponents of the legislation are making a last-ditch attempt to derail the measure by pledging to vote “no” on the rule.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that he cannot “in good conscience” vote for the debt ceiling bill.

“The best thing that could be said about the current deal on the debt ceiling is that it could have been much worse,” Sanders said in a statement, citing caps to health care, education and government programs while having to revisit what he called an “absurd process” of hiking the debt ceiling again in 2025 as part of the deal.

“Having said that, I cannot vote for this bill,” he said.

— Jared Gans