House of Representatives passes debt bill

Enough Democrats and Republicans reluctantly joined forces to see the proposed legislation through by 269 to 161

The weeks-long confrontation over the US debt has finally ended after the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favour of a deal to prevent the economic catastrophe of America defaulting for the first time in its history.

The vote came only hours before the Treasury deadline that potentially would have seen the US run out of cash and no longer able to pay its bills.

Enough Democrats and Republicans reluctantly joined forces to see the proposed legislation through, 269 votes to 161. But there were significant revolts by both Democrats and Republicans. If the House had failed to vote in favour, markets would likely have gone into freefall.

With so much at stake, the Democrats and Republicans called in all members. In an emotional moment, even the Democrat Gabrielle Giffords returned to vote for the first time since being shot in the head in Tucson, Arizona, in January.

She received a standing ovation from both sides of the House.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill at noon but that is largely a formality, because the Democrats have a majority and the Republican leadership has promised support. The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said there were enough votes in the Senate to pass the bill.

The House of Representatives, with a large number of Republicans aligned to the Tea Party movement, had been the main obstacle. The deal looks mainly like a victory for the Republicans, with the Democrats emerging with little to show for all the weeks of strife. Barack Obama, who negotiated the deal with Republican and Democratic leaders at the weekend, hopes to sign the bill into law after the Senate vote and before midnight on Tuesday.

Many Democrats expressed unhappiness with the legislation, rushed through at the last minute without the normal scrutiny in order to meet the deadline, because it contains more than $2tn in spending cuts over the next decade. They fear the poor will be the main casualties and feel that Obama caved in to the Tea Party Republicans.

Just before the vote, the minority leader of the House, Nancy Pelosi, urged her colleagues to vote in favour, even though she herself had serious misgivings about the bill. "Please think of what could happen if we defaulted," she said. "Please, please, please come down in favour of preventing the collateral damage."

The Democrats divided evenly in the vote, with 95 voting in favour and 95 against. It is a sizeable Democratic vote on a compromise that Obama had been desperately seeking and who had, on Sunday night, hailed it in a television statement.

There was also a revolt by Republicans aligned to the Tea Party movement who argued the cuts are not deep enough. About 66 Republicans voted no.

The bill will raise the US debt ceiling by $900bn over the next few months and by another $1.5tn early next year. Without the rise, Obama would have had to divert money from other federal spending to pay the interest on American loans and, as a consequence, he had warned that 80 million people in receipt of federal cheques, mainly benefits, might have ended up as the casualties.

Obama sent vice-president Joe Biden to Congress to try to sway disgruntled Democrats. In a closed meeting, Biden heard concern from his party colleagues that too much ground had been conceded to the Republicans in order to prevent the default.

In a sign of the polarisation of politics in Washington, Biden agreed with a Democratic colleague who objected to what he felt were extortion tactics by Tea Party Republicans. Biden, in words that will enrage many in the Tea Party, described hardline conservatives as having "acted like terrorists".

In comments typical of the Democratic mood, Congressman Eliot Engel told the Politico website: "If you had told me that this was the package a month ago, I would've asked you what you had been smoking."

The Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan body, reported that the deal would cut federal spending by $2.1tn over 10 years. The Republicans had demanded the cuts in return for raising the debt ceiling.


The Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, after a meeting of the Democratic caucus in the Senate attended by Biden, acknowledged the unhappiness of at least some of his Democratic colleagues. He said: "There was some enthusiasm for the legislation. Some others had no such enthusiasm," Reid said. Although some people were unhappy, he said it was a typical piece of compromise legislation.

Left-leaning Democrats fear that the spending cuts, to be looked at in detail by a bipartisan committee that will report in November, will hit the most vulnerable in society. Others questioned the value of spending cuts at a time when the economy is struggling to get out of recession.

In the House, the Republican Speaker, John Boehner, received a standing ovation at a gathering of House Republicans, before the vote.