The Senate on Thursday evening passed a bill to lift the debt ceiling that also caps defense spending for the next two years, with the upper chamber’s leadership offering commitment for the possibility of supplemental funding measures to add a defense boost.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) offered a joint statement with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ahead of the floor vote that noted the Fiscal Responsibility Act
does not block the use of emergency spending measures to address national security-related items, which followed Republican senators push earlier in the day for a commitment on exploring supplementals for increasing defense spending.
“This debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries and respond to ongoing and growing national security threats…Nor does this debt ceiling limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds [to] respond to various national issues, such as disaster relief, combating the fentanyl crisis or other issues of national importance. I know a strong bipartisan majority of senators stands ready to receive and process emergency funding requests from the administration. The Senate is not about to ignore our national needs, nor abandon our friends and allies who face urgent threats from America’s most dangerous adversaries,” Schumer and McConnell wrote in their joint statement.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee and its defense panel, said earlier on Thursday “the inadequate defense budget could be addressed and remedied by having an emergency defense supplemental” (Defense Daily, June 1).
Following the House’s passage of the debt limit bill on Wednesday and the Senate’s 63 to 36 vote on Thursday evening, the measure now heads to the president’s desk for final signature just days before the June 5 deadline Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had said would require action to avoid a default scenario.
“Democrats are feeling very good tonight. We’ve saved the country from the scourge of default, even though there were some on the other side who wanted default, wanted to lead us to default. We may be a little tired – but we did it. So we’re very, very happy,” Schumer said at a press conference following the bill’s passage.
The bill raises the debt ceiling through FY ‘25, locks in an $886 billion defense topline, the level requested in the president’s budget for FY ‘24 and a 3.3 percent increase over FY ‘23, and a $704 billion topline for nondefense, around a five percent cut from the request.
The bill then authorizes a one percent increase in FY ‘25 to the defense and nondefense toplines.
The Senate considered 11 amendments to the bill in quick succession, which ranged from adjusting the bill’s sequestration provision and seeking to transfer funds from IRS cuts to boosting defense spending, all of which were voted down.
The final 63 to 36 vote to pass the bill included four ‘no’ votes from Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 31 from Republicans, with the former including progressive lawmakers that opposed provisions such as adding work requirements for certain federal assistance programs and the latter having objections to the defense spending level.
“Deficit reduction cannot just be about cutting programs that working families, the children, the sick, the elderly, and the poor depend upon. It must be about demanding that the billionaire class and profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes, reining in out-of-control military spending, reducing the price of prescription drugs, and ending billions of dollars in corporate welfare that goes to the fossil fuel industry and other corporate interests,” Sanders said in a statement ahead of the vote.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, said earlier on Thursday he would oppose the bill and that it had “enshrined” the president’s $886 billion defense topline request, which he called “woefully inadequate.”
Following the vote, Schumer was asked about the joint statement on potential supplementals as a means of addressing Republicans’ objections to the defense spending level in the debt limit deal.
“The Republican Senators were not happy with the caps that the Republican House members had agreed to. And so they came to us and said, ‘Well, about if we need money for Ukraine? What if we need money for these things? The caps may be too low.’ We felt that the caps were too low on nondefense discretionary [spending]. So McConnell and I put out a joint statement that we would look at finding ways to fund that were really needed through emergency and other ways but also through the regular appropriations process, which was always going to go forward. So that’s what it basically said. And when they came to me and asked me to do this, I said, ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea,’” Schumer said.
Schumer reiterated that supplementals could be used be used nondefense items as well, not exclusively to boost defense spending.
“Whatever the budget agreements have been, when there’s emergencies, whether they be on the foreign policy, military or domestic front, we’ve always funded them. And we reiterated the fact that that path is available to us today,” Schumer said. “It didn’t say we would do it. [It] said it’s a possibility to do it. That’s what we said. And it’s certainly on the table.”