WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday cleared a big hurdle to raising the debt limit later this month, advancing a measure designed to end weeks of partisan brinkmanship that risked a financial crisis.
Senators voted 64-36 to limit debate on a bill that would carve out a temporary exemption to the chamber's 60-vote cloture threshold so Democrats can raise the nation's borrowing capacity with a simple majority in a subsequent bill expected by next week.
The government may be unable to meet all its financial obligations after Dec. 15 without lifting the statutory debt ceiling, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen has warned.
The agreement between Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell frustrated nearly all House Republicans, only one of whom — retiring Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger — voted for the bill Tuesday.
Fourteen GOP senators voted for cloture Thursday after several aired their frustrations with the agreement this week. Many Republicans argued that McConnell should have extracted some sort of concession from Democrats to help them advance a debt limit bill outside the reconciliation process, or forced them to use the budget reconciliation process.
In addition to McConnell, Republican Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, Shelley Moore Capito of West Viriginia, Susan Collins of Maine, John Cornyn of Texas, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, John Thune of South Dakota, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi voted for cloture.
Schumer praised the bill Thursday, saying it would "provide a simple-majority vote to fix the debt ceiling without having to resort to a convoluted, lengthy and ultimately risky process."
McConnell began drawing battle lines over the debt limit this summer, alerting Democrats that Republicans didn't intend to cooperate on any debt limit bill unless Democrats stopped work on their roughly $2 trillion climate and social spending reconciliation bill.
Democrats vowed not to use the reconciliation process for the debt limit or to stop work on their tax and spending package. The intransigence of both parties placed Congress in a deadlock over the debt limit as the Treasury Department inched closer to running out of money to pay all of the country's bills in October.
Republicans later agreed that month to provide the votes needed to limit debate on a short-term patch, raising the debt limit by $480 billion, though Democrats passed the measure on their own.
Schumer's floor speech before the final vote on that legislation infuriated Republicans, leading McConnell to send a letter to President Joe Biden saying that he would "not be a party to any future effort to mitigate the consequences of Democratic mismanagement."
Eleven Senate Republicans voted to let the October measure go to final passage.
On Thursday, GOP Sens. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama and Mike Rounds of South Dakota switched to vote against cloture on the expedited process bill. But it didn't matter because four GOP senators flipped from "nay" in October to "yea" on Thursday: Ernst, Romney, Tillis and Wicker. Burr, who was absent from the October vote, also voted for cloture on Thursday.
McConnell and Schumer began talking about the debt limit in mid-November and announced agreement earlier this week on the temporary loophole for a debt limit bill. As part of the agreement, Democrats must raise the debt limit by a specific amount and not suspend it through a future date.
The procedural debt limit agreement was then attached to language that would stave off spending cuts to Medicare, causing additional frustration among GOP lawmakers who support that section of the bill.
The bill would delay Medicare cuts that would otherwise be triggered Jan. 1, including across-the-board reductions to provider reimbursements as well as separate cuts to physician and laboratory services payments. The bill would temporarily waive statutory pay-as-you-go rules that would result in steeper Medicare cuts next year as well as major reductions in farm price supports and a host of other federal benefits.
During debate Wednesday, Republican senators including John Kennedy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sought consent to offer alternative measures that would preserve the delay in Medicare and other cuts but drop the debt limit process language. Democrats objected.
Kennedy said his proposal would "protect Medicare and other programs from harmful cuts" without allowing for increased borrowing room to accommodate more partisan spending in the reconciliation bill Democrats want to enact before the end of this year.
"If Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling to fund trillions of dollars in extra spending while inflation is ravaging American families, they can do it themselves,” Kennedy said.
Legislation to actually raise the debt limit has not yet been released and negotiations are ongoing about how much more borrowing capacity Democrats need to include to hold off another debt limit vote until after next year’s midterm elections. Based on past projections by the Bipartisan Policy Center, that could require something in the ballpark of $2 trillion.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schumer have said they hope to pass that legislation before Treasury's Dec. 15 deadline.
Thursday's procedural vote included a timing agreement that the cloture vote is considered to have been taken at 1 a.m. Thursday instead of at 12:30 p.m., when the vote actually occurred. That timing adjustment will allow the Senate to vote on passage before funeral services for former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., on Friday.
The passage vote could be moved up if Republicans and Democrats reach a time agreement to limit some of the 30 hours of post-cloture time.
"We still have a few more steps to take before we completely resolve this matter, but I'm optimistic that after today's vote we'll be on a glide path to avoid a catastrophic default," Schumer said Thursday.
