Despite President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s best efforts, the debt ceiling deal reached last weekend may not receive the votes needed to become law and avoid default, as members of the House Freedom Caucus are vowing to sink the legislation.
The country still has a few days before the U.S. Treasury Department says it will default on its debt on June 5, sparking a recession among other economic struggles that would follow. However, the House will vote on the legislation today in the hopes of moving closer to getting the debt ceiling raised.
The chair of the Freedom Caucus, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), shared on Tuesday that the deal reached was a failure and that the caucus will work to ensure it isn’t signed into law.
“We will do everything in our power to stop it and end it now,” Perry said.
The legislation has been named the Fiscal Responsibility Act and has terms from both Republicans and Democrats inside. The bill includes language that will raise the debt ceiling until 2025, past the next election as Biden wanted, while also including government spending cuts and the expansion of work requirements, a point pushed for by McCarthy.
The House rules committee voted late on Tuesday to advance the bill to a final floor vote today, but during the committee vote, two Republican Freedom Caucus members, Chip Roy (R-TX) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), tried to block it from advancing.
“The Republican conference right now has been torn asunder,” Roy said before the hearing. “Not one Republican should vote for this deal. It is a bad deal.”
The final vote in the committee was 7-6, with the majority in favor of advancing the bill. Four Democrat representatives also joined Roy and Norman in attempting to stop the bill, a sign of a potential struggle that may face it on Wednesday.
Still, supporters of McCarthy and the legislation are speaking in favor of the bill, with House majority leader Steve Scalise (LA) saying Tuesday Night that “For once in a long, long time, Washington is actually going to spend less money next year than it is this year, and that’s a reform that all of us can support.”
The chair of the rules committee, Tom Cole (R-OK), also shared his support of the bill, saying it’s the party’s best possible option.
“Today’s bill is a product of compromise that reflects the realities of a divided government,” Cole said at the hearing. “In a true negotiation, you always get less than you want and give up more than you’d like.”
Members of the Freedom Caucus do not seem as inclined to support the legislation, even with Democrats controlling the White House and Senate.
This includes Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), who said on Tuesday that he thinks Republicans in support of McCarthy’s deal won’t be enough to get it passed and that he will need the votes of several Democrats to get the bill passed.
“This is a career-defining vote for every Republican,” Bishop said Tuesday. “This bill, if it passes, must pass with less than half of the Republican conference.”
Across the aisle, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jefferies also discussed this point, saying earlier this week that Republicans need to produce the majority of the votes to get the bill passed.
“This is an agreement that, at their insistence, they negotiated with the administration,” Jeffries said. “It’s our full and complete expectation that they are going to produce at least 150 votes.”
If passed on Wednesday, the legislation still needs to clear the Senate within just a few days for the country to avoid default on June 5.
But even if the bill is passed with support from both sides of the aisle, McCarthy could be in for some more trouble from his own party, including potential efforts to remove him from his position.
“If a majority of Republicans are against a piece of legislation, and you use Democrats to pass it, that would immediately be a black-letter violation of the deal we had with McCarthy to allow his ascent to the speakership, and it would likely trigger an immediate motion to vacate,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said on Tuesday.
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