The Senate prepared on Tuesday to take up the budget agreement that passed the House after months of partisan impasse, in hopes that President Obama could sign it into law before the government’s borrowing authority was set to run out at midnight.
With the support of leaders in both parties and Mr. Obama, the hard-fought compromise was expected to win bipartisan support in the Senate, as it did on Monday night in the House, finally reaching the conclusion of a bitter fight that has left both parties bruised and exhausted. The Senate vote was expected at noon.
Enactment of the landmark legislation would signal a pronounced shift in fiscal policy, from the heavy spending on economic stimulus and warfare of the past few years to a regime of steep spending cuts aimed at reducing the deficits -- so far, without new revenues sought by the White House. But the fight, which is only half over until a second round is completed over the next five or six months, also exposed deep ideological schisms between and within the political parties, tarnished the images of Congress and the president alike, and in the view of many may not have done much to help the limping economy.
Despite the tension and uncertainty that has surrounded efforts to raise the debt ceiling, the House vote of 269 to 161 was relatively strong in support of the plan, which would cut more than $2.1 trillion in government spending over 10 years while extending the borrowing authority of the Treasury Department. It would also create a powerful new joint Congressional committee to recommend broad changes in spending -- and possibly in tax policy -- to reduce the deficit.
Scores of Democrats initially held back from voting, to force Republicans to register their positions first. Then, as the time for voting wound down, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, returned to the floor for the first time since being shot in January and voted for the bill to jubilant applause and embraces from her colleagues. It provided an unexpected, unifying ending to a fierce standoff in the House.
Although the actual spending cuts in the next year or two would be relatively modest in the context of a $3.7-trillion U.S. federal budget, they would represent the beginning of a new era of restraint at a time when unemployment remains above 9%, growth is slowing and there are few good policy options for giving the economy a stimulative kick.
The negotiations exposed deep fissures within both parties. In the end, 174 Republicans and 95 Democrats backed the deal, and 66 Republicans and 95 Democrats voted against it. But Republicans and Democrats alike made clear they were not happy with the agreement, which was struck late Sunday between the leadership of Congress and Mr. Obama.
Top lawmakers characterized the bill as a must-pass measure needed to prevent a potentially crippling blow to the struggling economy.
"The default of the United States is not an option," said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat.
Mr. Hoyer urged lawmakers to vote not as members of either party, but as "Americans concerned about the fiscal posture of their country, about the confidence that people around the world have in the American dollar."
Republicans, while expressing dissatisfaction that the measure did not provide more savings, said it was a modest but useful first step in reversing the government’s spending course and claimed that they had prevailed by keeping the agreement free of new revenue and offsetting the increase in the debt limit with spending cuts.
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