Washington: Senate Republicans blocked a House-passed bill to suspend the debt limit and avert a government shutdown from advancing in the Senate on Monday, CNN reported.
The move comes after Republicans had insisted that Democrats act alone to address the debt limit and leaves Congress without a clear plan to keep the government open with the threat of a potential shutdown looming by the end of the week.
Government funding is set to expire on September 30, and the stopgap bill the House approved last week would extend funding and keep the government open through December 3. In addition, the measure includes a debt limit suspension through December 16, 2022. The clock is ticking to address the debt limit and Congress may only have until mid-October to act before the federal government can no longer pay its bills.
The bill failed on a 48-50 party-line vote with no Republicans voting with Democrats in support of the measure.
After the failed vote, Schumer promised “further action” this week to prevent a shutdown but did not outline a plan.
“Keeping the government open and preventing a default is vital to our country’s future and we’ll be taking further action to prevent this from happening this week,” he said.
It’s possible Democrats could move to strip out the debt limit suspension from the funding bill and attempt to pass a clean stopgap spending measure quickly through both chambers ahead of the deadline, which Senate Republicans have said they would support.
Democrats do have options to raise the debt limit on their own to prevent the US from defaulting on its debts, but they argue that the vote should be a bipartisan shared responsibility.
