House Republicans on Wednesday passed the rule governing debate on bipartisan legislation to lift the debt ceiling, a procedural hurdle that paves the way for final passage of the bill later in the day — but not without an emergency assist from Democrats.
Lawmakers approved the rule in a vote of 241-187, just days before June 5, the day Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the U.S. could plunge into default if the borrowing limit is not raised.
But the vote was not without a good deal of drama.
While rules votes are typically a partisan, mundane and entirely predictable part of the legislative process, Wednesday’s vote bucked all three trends when more than two dozen Republicans opposed the measure as a last-gasp opportunity to defeat the underlying debt ceiling bill.
And after hanging back, more than 50 Democrats bucked convention to deliver the last-minute votes to push the rule over the finish line.
“I’m opposed to the bill, I don’t want the bill to advance, and so I’d like for us to work on another bill that did more to try to help improve the country from a fiscal standpoint,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) told The Hill Tuesday night, explaining why he would oppose the rule.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), another vocal critic of the bill, took to the House floor Wednesday afternoon to encourage his colleagues to oppose the rule. Twenty-nine did just that.
Given McCarthy’s thin House majority, those GOP defectors would have been enough to kill the procedural bill — and gum up the whole process — because of an old House tradition that members of the minority party tend to oppose all rules, even when they support the underlying legislation. And heading into the vote, Democratic leaders suggested they would continue that tradition, despite their support for the Biden-backed debt-ceiling package.
“It’s very simple: The majority is responsible for passing the rule,” Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the Democratic whip, told reporters in the Capitol Wednesday morning.
Clark’s office recommended that Democratic lawmakers vote against the rule.
Yet Democratic leaders, in somewhat cryptic fashion, also vowed not to allow the country to default, forecasting the scenario that ultimately unfolded on the House floor, where 52 Democrats bucked routines and crossed the aisle to secure passage of the rule.
The unconventional vote launched the debate on the debt-ceiling package, negotiated between McCarthy and President Biden, which is scheduled for a final vote Wednesday night.
The proposal then moves to the Senate, where Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is fighting to pass it before week’s end.
The debt limit bill — titled the Fiscal Accountability Act — came together after more than a week of high-stakes negotiations between emissaries tapped by President Biden and McCarthy.
The legislation, which stretches 99 pages, suspends the debt limit until Jan. 1, 2025, implements some spending caps over the next two years, beefs up work requirements for federal assistance programs and claws back billions of dollars of unspent COVID-19 funds, among other provisions.
Wednesday’s high-profile vote came after the House Rules Committee adopted the rule to govern debate over the debt limit measure Tuesday night, despite two Republicans breaking from their party and opposing it. Votes in the Rules Committee typically break along party lines, with the majority party supporting the rule and the minority party voting against it.
But in a sign of protest against the debt limit bill, two Republicans on the panel — Roy and Rep. Ralph Norman (S.C.) — opposed the rule, putting the bill at risk of being blocked from advancing to the chamber for a vote. Roy and Norman had initially opposed McCarthy’s Speakership, and both have been vocal critics of the legislation.
The Roy-Norman revolt, however, was one vote short of blocking the bill. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), another conservative on the Rules panel, voted for the rule, resulting in a final 7-6 vote in favor of advancing the measure and sending the rule to the floor for consideration.