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The Senate was poised to pass the bipartisan debt ceiling agreement struck by President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as early as Thursday night, preparing to send it to Mr. Biden’s desk just days before a first-ever default on the nation’s bills was to take place.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer scrambled to quell opposition from defense hawks, climate-conscious Democrats and hardline Republicans, all while expediting the Senate’s time-consuming legislative procedures with little room for error.
The two parties struck an agreement to allow 11 amendment roll call votes Thursday evening, demanded by Republicans and one Democrat, in exchange for fast-tracking the bill to final passage later in the night. The chamber had to pass the legislation, which cleared the GOP-led House Wednesday and suspends the debt limit until January 2025, before next week or risk the country defaulting on its ability to pay all of its bills.
“For all the ups and downs and twists and turns it took to get here, it is so good for this country that both parties have come together at last to avoid default,” said Mr. Schumer, New York Democrat.
The amendments, most of which required a 60-vote threshold, were all but certain to fail. Any changes by the Senate would force the bill back to the House, scuttling Washington’s ability to meet its Monday default deadline set by the Treasury Department.
“Any change to this bill that forces us to send it back to the House would be entirely unacceptable,” Mr. Schumer said. “It would almost guarantee default.”
The show votes on amendments were crucial to strike agreement among all 100 senators to expedite the bill.
The biggest group that Mr. Schumer worked to win over were defense hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham, who blamed House Republicans for not raising defense spending enough in the debt-limit deal. Mr. Schumer agreed to advance a future supplemental military funding bill at a later date.
“For three days, I and some others have been screaming to high Heaven that what the House did was wrong,” said Mr. Graham, South Carolina Republican. “It’s right to want to control spending, and there’s some good things in this bill. But it was wrong to give a defense number inconsistent with the threats we face.”
Senators from both sides, particularly defense hawks, were also upset with the deal’s provision for a 1% cut across the entire federal government if Congress fails to pass into law its annual budget by Jan. 1. The last time Congress approved a budget on time and did not require a stop-gap funding measure was 1996.
