In the night between Thursday and Friday, the US Senate approved the agreement to increase the so-called “debt ceiling” for two years, ie the amount of money that the state can borrow on the markets to finance its activities. The favorable vote came a day after that of the House and concluded the process of the agreement in Congress. Now the provision will have to be signed by President Joe Biden to become law.
Approval in the Senate was taken for granted by analysts, but there were still doubts about the timing of the vote: in fact, the agreement had to be approved by June 5, the date chosen by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as the indicative limit before the United States would no longer be able to repay its creditors by defaulting. In that scenario, the state would no longer have been able to pay salaries and carry out a large part of its public expenditure, with serious consequences also on the financial markets.
In Thursday night’s session in the Senate, the deal is past thanks to the favorable vote of 44 democratic senators, 17 republicans and two independents. To pass, it had to be approved by at least 60 votes out of 100 in the Senate, which is narrowly controlled by the Democrats. Initially eleven amendments to the text were tabled, but all were rejected. If even one amendment had received a favorable vote, the agreement would have had to go back to the House, reducing the chances of approval by 5 June.
The vote took place thanks to a rare collaboration between Democrats and Republicans, very divided on practically all the main issues and choices for the country. The strong division had conditioned the negotiations, with the government of Joe Biden which for months had rejected a large part of the negotiations, arguing that the debt ceiling should be increased without conditions. Biden had finally negotiated with the Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, entering into an agreement at the end of May.
The hardest part was getting the deal through the House, where Republicans have a nine-vote majority, with many from the more radical sections of the party. The deal finally passed in the middle of the week with 314 votes in favor: 165 from Democrats and 149 from Republicans.
With Biden’s signature scheduled for today, the agreement will become law, which can be applied avoiding the default of the United States.