Thread: House approves increase in debt ceiling, no strings attached

House approves increase in debt ceiling, no strings attached

Published February 11, 2014 FoxNews.com

FILE: May 10, 2012: House Speaker John Boehner takes questions during a news conference on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C.AP


WASHINGTON – The House voted Tuesday to raise the government's borrowing limit, as GOP leaders backed down from a potential confrontation with Democrats by declining to seek any concessions in exchange for the increase.

The debt-ceiling bill passed on a 221-201 vote, and now goes to the Senate for final approval.

The vote comes after Republican leaders backed off their strategy of trying to use the debt limit to force spending cuts or other concessions. In 2011, President Obama yielded to similar demands but has since said he would not negotiate with Republicans over the matter.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, swiftly teed up the vote Tuesday after failing to get enough conservative support for a plan that would have tied the debt ceiling measure to one reversing cuts to military pensions. Another failed proposal had tied the debt cap hike to the Keystone pipeline.

The House, as part of a separate bill, nevertheless voted Tuesday to restore full cost of living increases to pension benefits for younger military retirees. The final vote was 326-90.

But Boehner's decision to move ahead on the debt-ceiling legislation without any concessions signals a potentially new approach on these so-called must-pass bills. His party was bruised last year after Republicans tried to extract changes to ObamaCare as part of a budget bill, resulting in a partial government shutdown that lasted until Boehner finally called a relatively clean budget bill to the floor -- which passed on mostly Democratic votes.

The vote Tuesday followed the same pattern. Boehner relied on mostly Democrats to bring the bill over the finish line; 193 Democrats voted for the bill, while just 28 Republicans did the same. Boehner and other GOP leaders were among those who voted yes.

Boehner announced before the vote that that was the strategy. "We'll let the Democrats put the votes up. We'll put a minimum number of (GOP) votes up to get it passed," Boehner said. "We'll let his party give him the debt ceiling increase that he wants."

But the vote caused consternation among conservative groups that have pushed Congress -- and particularly Tea Party-aligned lawmakers they helped elect -- to rein in deficit spending, in part by extracting spending cuts wherever possible.

"A clean debt ceiling is a complete capitulation on the Speaker's part and demonstrates that he has lost the ability to lead the House of Representatives, let alone his own party," Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, said in a statement.

The measure approved by the House does not raise the debt limit by a set amount but does suspend it through March 15, 2015. That buys the Treasury Department the leeway it needs to borrow money to pay for Social Security checks, payments on government debt and paychecks for federal workers.

The vote, which was originally scheduled for Wednesday, was moved up a day because of a winter storm headed toward the East Coast.

Conservative lawmakers, too, were angered by the leadership's approach.
"Right now we've got a debt ceiling bill that increases spending, which is diametrically 180 degrees opposite of what we were battling over just two years ago -- where the question was how much in spending cuts we were going to get," said Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala.

Tuesday's developments amount to a blow for a party that has sought to use must-pass debt ceiling measures as leverage to force spending cuts on Democrats. Republicans won more than $2 trillion in spending cuts in a 2011 showdown, but gave Obama two debt limit increases last year with only modest add-ons.

Time was running out for lawmakers to act to lift the debt limit. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew told lawmakers last week that Treasury will exhaust by Feb. 27 its ability to employ accounting maneuvers to borrow to pay its bills.

Lew told congressional leaders Monday that he had begun tapping two large government worker retirement funds to clear room under the debt limit. The action involving the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund will provide $50 billion to $75 billion in additional borrowing room, while tapping the Government Securities Investment Fund will provide about $175 billion in borrowing room, Lew estimated.

Lew announced he would suspend payments to these two pension funds and would also draw down investments made in the funds. Previous Treasury secretaries have also employed this bookkeeping maneuver. Once Congress approves a new debt ceiling, the Treasury makes the funds whole by replacing the withdrawn funds and lost interest earnings.

Lawmakers temporarily suspended the borrowing limit last October in an agreement that ended a government shutdown and extended the federal borrowing limit.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...bt-limit-hike/

Can someone post for us a list of the Republicans that voted carte blanch for this increase????

W

. . . All of Republican leadership — Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — voted for the bill.

Leadership allies including Reps. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Peter King (R-N.Y.), Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) also voted for the bill.

But Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), a potential 2016 presidential candidate who wants to chair the committee with jurisdiction over the debt limit, voted no.

House Republican Conference Chairman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) also voted against the bill, along with GOP Policy Chairman James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), the chairman of the party’s political arm.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi held her troops together: Just Reps. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) and John Barrow (D-Ga.) voted against the bill . . .

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/0...#ixzz2t46iFlNI

I guess what we need to see is how many of ALIPAC's 35 GOP Targets in the house total voted for the bill?

W

The 28 Republicans who voted "yes": Those in red are on our traitor list-

• John Boehner (OH)
• Ken Calvert (CA)
• Dave Camp (MI)
• Eric Cantor (VA)
• Howard Coble (NC)
• Chris Collins (NY)
• Charles Dent (PA)
• Michael Fitzpatrick (PA)
• Michael Grimm (NY)
• Richard Hanna (NY)
• Doc Hastings (WA)
• Darrell Issa (CA)
  
• Peter King (NY)
• Kevin McCarthy (CA)
• Buck McKeon (CA)
• Patrick Meehan (PA)
• Gary Miller (CA)
• Devin Nunes (CA)
  
• David Reichert (WA)
• Hal Rogers (KY)
• Peter Roskam (IL)
• Ed Royce (CA)
• Jon Runyan (NJ)
• John Shimkus (IL)
• Chris Smith (NJ)
• David Valadao (CA)
• Frank Wolf (VA)

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...iling-Increase

Thank you for this info!

W

RELATED

http://www.alipac.us/f9/house-approv...nsions-297389/