The Senate vote Thursday night was 63-36 on the bipartisan legislation suspending the debt limit and imposing new spending caps, sending it to President Biden for his signature and ending the possibility of a government default.
As in the House, Democrats provided the most votes for passage, with 44 of them and two independents joining 17 Republicans in support; 31 Republicans, four Democrats and one independent voted no.
Biden is to address the nation at 7 p.m. Eastern time Friday.
The Senate vote came after an afternoon of closed-door talks to resolve a last-minute flareup over Pentagon funding among Republicans who said the debt-limit package severely underfunded the military. Senate leaders resolved the dispute with a formal statement that the debt-limit agreement “does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities.”
Biden had refused for months to engage with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy but finally did so after the California Republican managed in April to pass a GOP fiscal plan, spurring negotiations with the White House that produced the compromise.
McCarthy defied expectations and even earned grudging respect from White House officials while defusing the debt limit time bomb he planted by insisting on concessions in return for raising the nation’s borrowing limit, says an analysis by long-time New York Times reporter Carl Hulse.
The bar was low for McCarthy, known more for politicking and fundraising than for policymaking, after he struggled to win his post in the first place as House Republicans took control in January, the Times says.
In the end, he delivered an agreement that met his goal of cutting spending from current levels. But he managed to do so only with significant help from Democrats, who rescued him on a key procedural vote and then provided the support needed for passage. McCarthy exceeded his goal of winning the support of the majority of his members with 149 backing it, but more Democrats — 165 of them — voted for the bill than members of his own party, an outcome that will fuel GOP criticism that he cut a deal that sold out his own people, the Times says.
That's not the way powerful speakers of the past have typically accomplished their goals, says the Times.
But McCarthy "has been uncommonly willing to endure political pain and even humiliation — a trait that was on ample display during his 15-round fight for the speakership in January — while focusing on extracting a few marquee concessions from Mr. Biden that could allow him to claim victory and avert a default he plainly wanted to avoid, even if many of his members did not,” says the Times.
His allies gave him credit for taking on the White House and Senate Democrats and emerging with a positive result when most Democrats were expecting him to fail. White House officials and congressional Democrats had privately predicted that McCarthy would be unable to corral his extraordinarily fractious troops, and would therefore have no leverage in fiscal talks, allowing them to force through an increase in the debt ceiling with few, if any, concessions to Republicans, according to the Times.
McCarthy’s achievement still may come at a cost, the Times says. Far-right conservative Republicans remain outraged at the agreement he struck with Biden, saying it fell woefully short of what he promised and what Republicans committed to as they pursued the majority last year.