US House passes Boehner debt ceiling plan
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Xinhua, July 30, 2011
The US House of Representatives passed a debt ceiling plan put forth by House Speaker John Boehner in a vote on Friday to avoid a looming debt default crisis, but the bill is hardly possible to become law.
Republican leaders in the US House of Representatives on Thursday night postponed a crucial vote on the debt ceiling plan put forward by Boehner to secure enough votes needed for its passage.
Republicans currently control 240 House seats, but were unable to muster the 217 votes needed to pass the bill Thursday night, with some obstinate party members holding out for steeper spending cuts and toughening their stance.
GOP got 218 votes Friday evening to send the measure to the Senate floor, despite veto warning from the White House and strong opposition in the Senate.
Under the newly modified two-step plan outlined by Boehner, a Republican, Congress would immediately raise the federal government's borrowing capacity by $900 billion extending to early next year and cut spending by $917 billion over a decade.
According to the legislation rewritten overnight, the second tranche of debt limit increase next year would be contingent on Congress approving a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and sending it to the states for ratification.
Democratic leaders said that the measure is dead as soon as it arrived in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
To amend the Constitution or default is a "highly dangerous game" to play, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday.
The bill made it even more difficult to seal a bipartisan deal, as it would hold the American economy hostage to a two-thirds vote to amend the Constitution, Carney told reporters Friday.
"The House of Representatives is still trying to pass a bill that a majority of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have already said they won't vote for," US President Barack Obama said hours before the voting, adding that it does not solve the problem and has no chance of becoming law.
Any debt ceiling compromise plan to avert an unprecedented debt default crisis should be bipartisan in order to win support from both Democrats and Republicans, Obama said during a hastily arranged White House press conference Friday.
The debt talk deadlock might risk the losing of top-notch credit rating for the United States, Obama warned.
The federal government's borrowing limit, currently at $14.29 trillion, was reached on May 16. The Treasury Department said the nation would begin to default on its debts unless Congress agreed to lift the limit by August 2.
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