Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy talks to reporters as he walks to the House floor for a procedural vote ahead of the final vote for H.R. 3746 – Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 on May 31.
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Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy talks to reporters as he walks to the House floor for a procedural vote ahead of the final vote for H.R. 3746 – Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 on May 31.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
House lawmakers are debating a piece of compromise legislation brokered between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to avoid an unprecedented debt default with just days to spare.
“I could say, ‘I’m going to vote no because there’s something not in the bill.’ If I took that philosophy, I would never vote yes,” McCarthy said on the floor, nodding to a faction in his conference unhappy with the deal.
“I simply read the bills in front of me and decide is this good for the country. I would say that answer is easily yes,” McCarthy added. “For the first time in more than a decade, Congress will spend less next year than this year.”
Democrats during the floor debate reiterated a claim they’ve made for months: that House Republicans held the economy hostage by not agreeing to pass a clean debt limit bill.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries praised his members for pushing back against “extreme MAGA Republican efforts to jam right-wing cuts down the throat of the American people.”
The 99-page bill cleared a procedural hurdle Wednesday afternoon with bipartisan support. Democratic lawmakers initially held back on voting on the rule needed to advance the legislation, leaving Republicans to be the only ones voting in favor of the rule for several minutes.
“I probably would’ve done the same thing,” McCarthy said of Jeffries’ choice to wait until the last minute to give his members the green light to vote. “Well played.”
A similar strategy may be on display at the evening vote as well, with Democratic lawmakers waiting on the floor to see how many Republicans support it first.
“You may see that,” New Hampshire Rep. Annie Kuster told NPR.
“I think it’s appropriate for our constituency to know what is the level of support within the Republican caucus, and to single out how many members of that caucus would be willing to let our economy collapse,” Kuster said. “I think that’s important information.”
Kuster, who spoke with President Biden about the legislation on Monday, says he has been “very involved” in reaching out to members to boost support for the bill. Kuster chairs the center-left New Democrat Coalition, which is likely to provide a bulk of Democratic votes Wednesday night. Kuster plans to vote for the bill and expects it to pass, opening a pathway for a new chapter in bipartisanship.
“Since the prior president and certainly since Jan. 6th, it’s been very difficult in the Capitol working across the aisle. It’s been very painful,” she said. “And I think this whole agreement is a turning of a corner toward a more productive relationship between Republicans and Democrats.”
What’s in the bill
The bipartisan bill would pair a suspension of the debt limit for nearly two years to a package of spending cuts. It would establish spending caps for the federal budget while also making policy changes, including: a claw-back of approximately $27 billion in federal agencies intended to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and an overhaul of permitting reviews for energy projects. It would shift roughly $20 billion of the $80 billion the IRS got through the Inflation Reduction Act.
The bill phases in higher age limits for work requirements on certain federal safety net programs like food stamps, lifting the maximum age from 50 to 54 by 2025. It also would create new exemptions that waive those requirements for all veterans and those experiencing homelessness, and young adults between 18-24-years old aging out of foster care.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the changes to the food stamp program could cost the government roughly $2.1 billion over the next decade.
The CBO forecasts the overall agreement would cut federal deficits by about $1.5 trillion over the next decade. That’s just under 7% of what those deficits were projected to be prior to the deal. Most of the deficit reduction would come from caps on discretionary spending other than defense — which makes up a small portion of the federal budget.
Expected defections on both sides of the aisle
The high stakes negotiations for the deal and subsequent vote are a critical test for McCarthy as speaker. With his narrow majority, McCarthy had a bit of a balancing act — crafting a deal that satisfied the demands of the majority of his conference without alienating some of the Democratic lawmakers he needs to support the bill in order for it to pass.
A bloc of conservative members expressed their dismay at some of the provisions in the legislation, and argue McCarthy didn’t align the bill close enough to a version the House passed in April.
“People want to compare to what they wanted,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said. “But they should compare to where we were at, which was we were going to get a clean debt ceiling with nothing.”
GOP members left a closed-door conference meeting Tuesday night largely quashing the idea that disaffected members could move to oust McCarthy under a provision he agreed to during his fight for the gavel that allows any single lawmaker to bring up a snap vote to potentially oust the speaker.
Meanwhile, some Democratic members are struggling between wanting to pass a bill to avoid a potentially catastrophic default and passing legislation with provisions their constituents don’t support, like work requirements and speeding up permitting on energy projects.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said he plans to vote ‘no’ on the bill, citing his concerns with changes to food assistance, which he argues will have a disproportionate impact on Black women.
But he left open the possibility that he’d support the bill if it would change the outcome.
“If some vote was required to make sure that the country wouldn’t default, then I think any of us would provide it,” he told reporters Wednesday.
Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin told reporters the deal is “imperfect” but necessary.
“There was a group of us who felt strongly that while we didn’t like the bill and we didn’t like the way it was negotiated in many ways, we weren’t going to let our country go over a fiscal cliff and that had to be our guiding force,” she said.
The vote comes just days before the U.S. could run out of money to pay its bills, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
NPR’s Scott Horsley, Lexie Schapitl and Vincent Acovino contributed to this report.
