Senate Votes to End Debate on Debt Ceiling Increase

By ASHLEY PARKER FEB. 12, 2014

WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leaders on Wednesday rescued a measure to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, overcoming a threatened filibuster from members of their own party and averting a potential shock to the economy.

A vote to cut off debate on the debt ceiling measure passed 67 to 31, after a dramatic scene on the floor when Republicans managed to muster 12 votes in support, clearing the way for final approval.

The legislation required 60 votes to clear a procedural hurdle and break a threatened filibuster after Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said he planned to object to any effort to raise the debt ceiling with a minimum of 51 votes. But he failed in his attempt to unite Senate Republicans to prevent the increase.

“In my view, every Republican should stand together against raising the debt ceiling without meaningful structural reform to rein in our out-of-control spending,” Mr. Cruz said Wednesday. However, when asked if he thought a default on the nation’s debt was an option, he said, “Of course not.”

But Mr. Cruz’s high-profile gambit created the drama of the day.
Senate Republicans — unwilling to default on the nation’s debt but hoping to avoid voting for any debt ceiling increase — seethed at Mr. Cruz’s move, which many said was purely political and which forced them to scramble to produce at least five votes to end debate and move on to a final vote.

Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota, simply smiled when asked if he was annoyed with Mr. Cruz’s filibuster threat. “We’re working to see what we can put together, but I don’t know yet how it’s going to go,” he said.

The vote on Tuesday in the House, in which only 28 Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues to support the “clean” debt ceiling increase, was the first time since 2009 that an increase in the nation’s borrowing limit was not attached to other legislation.

But Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio was unable to rally his conference behind even a modest Republican policy proposal, and in violation of his own “Boehner Rule” — which calls for any increase in the debt ceiling to be offset by an equal spending cut or budgetary changes — the speaker ignored outside conservative groups and his party’s far right, passing the bill with Democratic support.

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Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

What Is the Debt Ceiling?

During the October 2013 government shutdown, The Times’s David Leonhardt explained the debt limit and how a failure to raise it could have affected the economy both at home and abroad.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/us...-increase.html