CNN Breaking News: Deal Raises Debt Ceiling thru 2012 & Saves $4 Trillion Over the Next Decade (321 hits)
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The Senate approved a last-minute compromise plan to raise the nation's debt ceiling, which will impose sweeping new spending cuts and will narrowly avert an unprecedented national default. The House of Representatives approved the measure Monday by a 269-161 vote, overcoming opposition from liberal Democrats and tea party Republicans. Passage in the Senate required a supermajority of 60 votes.
The measure needs to be signed into law by President Barack Obama before the end of Tuesday. The agreement - reached Sunday by Obama and congressional leaders - calls for up to $2.4 trillion in savings over the next decade, raises the debt ceiling through the end of 2012 and establishes a special congressional committee to recommend long-term fiscal reforms.
Breaking News Alert The New York Times Tuesday, August 2, 2011 -- -----
Senate Passes Debt Plan, Averting Default but Leaving Fissures
The Senate put an end to months of partisan impasse on Tuesday, passing a landmark budget agreement to raise the debt ceiling and sending the measure to the White House for President Obama’s signature — just hours before the government’s borrowing authority was set to run out at midnight.
The bipartisan vote was 74-26, a margin that belied the intensity of a fight that has left both parties bruised and exhausted.With the ambivalent support of Congressional leaders in both parties and Mr. Obama, the compromise, which passed the House with bipartisan support on Monday night, averts a potential default on the government’s debt and provides for increases in the debt ceiling to be phased in, with compensating budget cuts, lasting beyond the 2012 elections.
