Around midnight Democrats in the House passed a new debt limit increase of $2.5 trillion without a single vote from Republicans. This came after it passed the Senate yesterday with no Republican votes:
DC EXAMINER – The House of Representatives voted to raise the nation’s debt limit by $2.5 trillion, giving the Treasury Department the ability to issue additional new debt until after the 2022 midterm elections.
The final vote in the lower chamber was 221-209 . The measure passed the Senate earlier Tuesday and now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk.
Congress approved the increase on the brink of a Dec. 15 deadline set by Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, who said the government would run out of money to pay incoming bills if lawmakers did not act to raise the debt ceiling.
The measure passed after weeks of bipartisan negotiations that yielded an unusual agreement allowing Senate Democrats to pass the bill Tuesday with only 51 votes instead of the usual 60.
Every Republican voted against the measure in both the House and the Senate. They said Democrats are spending recklessly, racking up new federal debt and causing inflation to skyrocket.
Democrats hope to pass by Christmas a $2.4 trillion social welfare and green energy measure that the Congressional Budget Office found would add $3 trillion to the deficit over a decade if the programs within it are made permanent, as Democrats intend them to be.
Republicans in the Senate were the only ones who could have stopped it from passing. But instead they allowed it to pass with a simple majority so Democrats could have it without needing to get any Republicans onboard. I don’t know what concessions McConnell got for allowing this, but I suspect it wasn’t much.
Now Biden will sign it and Democrats can just keep spending and spending…