Treasury won an immediate reprieve of $400 billion in new borrowing authority Tuesday, as the Senate gave final approval to a hotly contested debt and deficit-reduction agreement hammered out with the White House Sunday night.
The bipartisan 74-26 roll call followed a 269-161 vote in the House Monday evening and the bill will be quickly signed by President Barack Obama, ending an unprecedented, hard-edged political struggle that pushed the nation to the brink of default.
Indeed, the stakes were far larger than the April shutdown fight, and more than any single event this year, the debt ceiling fight captured all the power—and critics would say extreme risk-taking—of the anti-government backlash that fueled the GOP’s gains in the 2010 elections.
“It may have been messy. It might have appeared to some like their government wasn’t working,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell minutes before the vote. “But, in fact, the opposite was true. The push and pull Americans saw in Washington these past few weeks was not gridlock. It was the will of the people working itself out in a political system that was never meant to be pretty…It was a debate that Washington needed to have.”
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2 Responses
This is absurd! Borrowing? And to what end? Obama has failed miserably.
We are no longer producing profitable goods and services in the United States.
Those American companies who forfeited looking out for the “national interest” by exploiting America and the world for their gain, should be FINED. Not taxed only; but FINED heavily. AND, have their American identity revoked forfeiting any benefits thereof.
If you want to create jobs, how about a surcharge (NOT a tax, tea partyeers) of 2-3 times the amount of money a company saved on each job that has been “outsourced” overseas.