US Senate clears path to suspend debt ceiling

The US Senate cleared the way on Thursday to suspend the debt ceiling by advancing a bill that will allow Democrats alone – and without Republican support – to prevent the country from defaulting on its national debt on December 15. .

The maneuver that will allow the United States to continue paying its debts is the result of months of negotiations between the leader of the Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer, and his Republican rival, Mitch McConnell.

Both reached an agreement this week to raise the debt ceiling without the Republicans having to vote in favor, since they have been resoundingly opposed to supporting any measure in this regard for months, and the far-right wing of the party has been especially combative on this issue. .

The initiative changes the rules so that, this time and only this time, obstruction techniques, such as filibustering, cannot be used and the bill can be approved with a simple minority of 50 seats, the number that Democrats have in the Senate although they have the tiebreaker vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

However, for the measure to be debated and subsequently submitted to a vote in the Senate, a procedural vote had to pass this Thursday for which 60 supports were necessary.

Fourteen Republicans, including McConnell, joined the 50 Senate Democrats on Thursday to overcome that procedural vote, which was the biggest obstacle for the United States to continue paying its sovereign debt last December 15.

McConnell’s decision to help Democrats has earned him criticism from some of his co-religionists and even former US President Donald Trump.

In a statement Wednesday night, Trump considered that the “Democrats would have completely surrendered if Mitch (McConnell) had known how to play his cards well.”

McConnell, however, considered that the date of December 15 was too close and failure to act could harm the US economy, a legislative source told Efe on Thursday.

As early as October, disagreements between Democrats and Republicans brought the United States to the brink of bankruptcy last October, but McConnell ended up giving in and helping Democrats.

Then, Congress approved raising the debt ceiling of US $ 480,000 million, an amount that will allow the United States to pay its debts until December 15, according to the latest calculations by the Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen.

The United States has never had to declare the suspension of payments on its national debt, but it was very close in 2011, when the mere possibility of that happening unleashed chaos in the financial markets and caused Standard & Poor’s to lower the solvency note. from the country.

From time to time, the United States appears to default on the national debt, because, unlike other countries, the United States government can only issue debt up to the limit established by Congress, which has the power to raise that ceiling as it sees fit.