CNN
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President Joe Biden signed into law on Saturday a bill that would suspend the nation’s debt limit until January 1, 2025, to avoid the first US default.
Suspending the debt limit until early 2025 takes the threat of default off the table until after next year’s presidential election. In addition to addressing the debt limit, the law curbs nondefense spending, expands work requirements for some food stamp recipients and revokes some Covid-19 relief funds, among other things. policy provisions.
A bipartisan deal to address the debt limit has been hammered out between the White House and House Republicans — the culmination of long days and nights of contentious negotiations that at times looked as though they would break down and fall apart altogether.
To get the bill to the finish line, lawmakers are racing against the clock before June 5, the date the Treasury Department warns it will no longer be able to pay all of the nation’s obligations in full and on time — a scenario that can cause. global economic disaster.
The deadline for passing the bill through Congress is so tight that there is little room for error, putting enormous pressure on the leadership of both parties. The House passed the bill on Wednesday and the Senate passed it on Thursday.
When approved, the deal faced backlash from the far left and the far right, but ultimately won support from a broad range of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, many of them moderates.
