Speaker Kevin McCarthy needed House Democrats to save the day as more Democrats than Republicans voted for the debt limit bill.
CNN’s Manu Raju tweeted the final numbers:
News: After a bitter standoff for months and frantic negotiations over the last couple weeks, the House passes a bill to suspend the national debt limit until January 2025. 314-117 vote.
149 GOP and 165 Dems voted for it.
71 Rs and 46 Dems voted against it
Now on to the Senate— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 1, 2023
After the House passage, President Biden said, “This agreement is good news for the American people and the American economy. It protects key priorities and accomplishments from the past two years, including historic investments that are creating good jobs across the country. And, it honors my commitment to safeguard Americans’ health care and protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It protects critical programs that millions of hardworking families, students, and veterans count on.”
One of the 46 Democrats who voted against the bill, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) explained why he changed his vote to no after the bill had enough votes to pass, “While I commend the President’s work and agree that this deal must pass to protect our economy from Republican’ hostage’ takers, I voted no on the bill after it received the votes needed to pass. I could not support a deal that included harmful spending cuts, bad permitting reform policies that undermine environmental justice, or work requirements for social safety net programs.”
The reality is that Speaker McCarthy may have gotten a majority of House Republicans to support the bill, but the legislation would have died without help from House Democrats.
If left on their own, Republicans would have the nation spiraling toward an economic disaster.
Kevin McCarthy doesn’t deserve credit for the passage of this bill. House Republicans don’t deserve any credit for manufacturing this crisis.
It was House Democrats who stepped up and saved the day.
The deal isn’t great, but it isn’t terrible either, but if the Republican children were left unsupervised, millions of Americans would be out of a job, and the nation would be screwed.