Debt limit deal moves toward House vote despite GOP revolt

A bipartisan deal to suspend the government debt ceiling and set federal funding limits advanced on Tuesday toward climactic House votes, even as hard-right Republicans revolted Tuesday over the deal between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden, claiming that their party was squandering an opportunity to force fundamental spending changes.

The legislation scaled its first major obstacle on Tuesday night, when the House Rules Committee voted to clear the way for a debate on the plan on Wednesday, after right-wing opponents failed to muster enough allies to block it.

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“Not one Republican should vote for this bill,” Representative Chip Roy, R-Texas, an influential member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, said hours before the committee vote.

Roy and Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, another ultraconservative member of the panel, broke with their party to oppose allowing the plan to be considered, but a third right-wing Republican on the committee, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voted to move it to the floor despite some misgivings. Seven Republicans voted in favor of advancing the measure, while four Democrats joined two Republicans in opposition.

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It was a boost to McCarthy’s effort to push through the agreement that he hammered out with Biden in days of difficult talks, and which must pass the House and clear the Senate by Monday to be enacted in time to avert a default.

The compromise has drawn the ire of right-wing Republicans, leaving open the possibility that its passage could jeopardise McCarthy’s standing on Capitol Hill, where any one lawmaker has the power to call a snap vote to oust him thanks to a rule McCarthy agreed to while he was grasping for support from the far right to be elected speaker in January.

Despite the outcry, McCarthy continued to express optimism that the legislation would pass, shrugging off the criticism and dismissing any concern for his own survival with a terse “no” during brief comments at the Capitol.

Even after avoiding a blockade by his own party in the Rules Committee, McCarthy was still facing a steep challenge in rounding up the 218 votes needed to pass the plan on the floor.

The bill will need a combination of Republican and Democratic votes to pass the House. It would then head to the Senate, where conservative Republicans are also unhappy with the framework and can at minimum slow its passage with procedural tactics.