(Washington) The US Congress on Tuesday was preparing to vote on a bill allowing it to raise the debt ceiling of the United States and therefore to avert the catastrophic threat of a default by the world’s leading economic power .
It is urgent: the debt ceiling – the maximum amount of debt of the United States – must be raised at all costs by Wednesday, otherwise America would no longer be able to honor its payments to its creditors and should cut spending.
This unprecedented situation would plunge American finance and economy into the unknown, but also, by extension, international ones, and could cause a recession.
After several days of negotiations, Democrats in the Senate unveiled a text on Tuesday morning that would raise the country’s debt limit by $ 2.5 trillion and allow it to honor its payments until 2023.
“The American people can breathe: there will be no default,” promised Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in the chamber a few hours before the vote.
The White House said “strongly support” this initiative thanks to which the American Treasury will be able according to it “to keep its commitments without causing disturbance or damage to our economy and to American families”.
She urged Congress to adopt this text without delay, an injunction to which elected members of the Senate should comply in the afternoon.
So that this appalling threat is indeed removed, it will still be up to the lower house to adopt the text and Joe Biden to enact it.
Raising the debt capacity of the United States is usually a formality, but the process has been the subject of very tough negotiations in the United States Congress in recent months, with Republicans deeming it to be like giving Joe a blank check. Biden, even as they accuse him of contributing to runaway inflation.
And Democrats retort that raising the debt limit is used to pay off amounts already borrowed, including trillions of dollars spent under the Trump presidency.
The Republican opposition finally allowed them to employ a complex parliamentary procedure, thanks to which the Democrats only need their votes to raise this famous “ceiling”.
The adoption of this new “ceiling” will be a relief for Joe Biden, who faces other dangers on Capitol Hill: its gigantic social and ecological component, on which he is betting to “rebuild America better” and save his popularity, which plummets, has been in parliamentary limbo for months.