The House vote on the rule for Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget resolution this week includes language preventing a clean vote on a separate resolution raising the debt limit, setting up a partisan showdown over government funding and the debt limit this fall.
As reported in Punchbowl News, Democrats are now expected to pair a debt limit increase next month with a continuing resolution to keep the federal government open beyond Sept. 30, which is when government funding runs out.
Earlier this month, a group of 46 Republican senators said that Democrats have engaged in a “massive and unprecedented deficit spending spree” that includes the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill passed in March and the $3.5 trillion budget resolution passed by the Senate and now the House. The senators, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), said they “will not vote to increase the debt ceiling, whether that increase comes through a stand-alone bill, a continuing resolution, or any other vehicle.”
McConnell has said Democrats should have addressed the debt limit through reconciliation, the vehicle Democrats have chosen to try to advance their social spending package.
This article was provided to OSAP by ASAE's Power of A and Inroads.