(Washington) The US Senate on Tuesday approved a bill to raise the debt ceiling of the United States and therefore avoid the danger of a default by the world’s largest economic power.
With their votes alone, Democratic senators approved this plan, which would allow the United States to honor its payments until early 2023.
The House of Representatives, with a Democratic majority, must now give the green light to this measure, before Joe Biden promulgates it.
Leap into the unknown
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. But it seems less and less likely.
“The American people can breathe: there will be no default,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The text voted on Tuesday in the Senate, the result of several days of negotiations, was unveiled a few hours earlier by the elected Democrats. He would raise the country’s debt limit to $ 2.5 trillion.
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 pass it without delay.
Blank check
Raising the debt capacity of the United States is usually a formality, but the process has been the subject of very tough negotiations in Congress in recent months, with Republicans saying it would amount to giving the President a blank check. , at the very moment when they accuse it of contributing to galloping 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” would be a relief for Joe Biden, who faces other dangers on Capitol Hill: his gigantic social and ecological component of 1750 billion dollars, on which he is betting to “rebuild America better ”and save his popularity rating which has plummeted, has remained in parliamentary limbo for months.