House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Tuesday allowed a vote on a debt ceiling increase with no conditions attached despite strong resistance from the conservative GOP rank and file. The “clean” debt measure suspends the nation’s borrowing limit through March 15, 2015. The bill was approved, 221-201, with 193 Democrats and 28 Republicans voting to pass it.
On Wednesday, the Senate then approved by a vote of 55 to 43, along strict party lines, the House-passed measure . President Obama is expected to sign the bill soon.
Raising the debt limit does not authorize new spending, but rather allows the federal government to pay for the obligations it has already approved. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said the government would hit its borrowing limit on February 27.
In the weeks leading up to the vote, House Republican leaders floated a number of conditions to link to the debt vote, but nothing could garner enough support to pass with GOP votes alone. “When you don’t have 218 votes, you have nothing,” Boehner told reporters on Tuesday. The final proposal GOP leaders floated would have tied the debt increase to a repeal of a minor cut to cost-of-living adjustments to the pensions of current working-age military retirees. The House still approved the pension cut repeal in a separate vote, 326-90, on Tuesday.
