Democrats are taking a victory lap after the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a poorly negotiated bill on Wednesday raising the U.S. debt ceiling into early 2025.
Negotiated behind closed doors by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and the Biden administration, the wrongly-named “Fiscal Responsibility Act” would permit the federal government “to take on unlimited debt through January 1, 2025,” according to The Daily Caller. Wednesday’s final House vote was 314-117, with more Democrats supporting the measure (165) than Republicans (149). Members of the House Freedom Caucus were among those to overwhelmingly oppose the bill.
Republicans who opposed the measure, such as Texas Rep. Chip Roy, have estimated the bill will allow the federal government to take on roughly $4 trillion in debt by the January 2025 deadline. Meanwhile, the “Limit, Save, Grow Act,” which was passed by House Republicans in April, sought to raise the debt ceiling by an estimated $1.5 trillion through March 2024.
The small cuts to federal spending in the Fiscal Responsibility Act include a clawback of $28 billion in unspent Covid funds and a $1.4 billion reduction in the IRS’s $80 billion funding provided by Democrats’ dishonestly-named “Inflation Reduction Act.” While not included in the bill, McCarthy and President Joe Biden purportedly agreed to a deal that would repurpose $20 billion in IRS funding over the next two years. Notably, the debt ceiling bill does not include any provisions related to U.S. border security.
While McCarthy has been marketing the legislation as the greatest thing since
