Debt ceiling bill faces a tough path in the House as GOP opposition grows

WASHINGTON — The compromise bill to raise the debt ceiling that House Republicans released on Sunday faces its first major test Tuesday in the House Rules Committee, where two of the panel’s nine Republicans have already signaled they will oppose bringing it to the House floor for a vote.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act is the product of a deal hammered out by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden to cap federal baseline spending for two years in exchange for Republican votes to raise the debt ceiling beyond next year’s elections and into 2025.

The bill needs to pass the GOP-majority House and the Democratic-controlled Senate before June 5, when the Treasury Department projects the United States would be unlikely to have enough money to meet its debt obligations.

But a bloc of at least 20 conservative Republicans rejected the compromise deal Tuesday. They accused McCarthy of caving in to the White House in exchange for “cosmetic” policy tweaks, and not the transformative change they were promised.

They lobbied against the deal on social media and in the Capitol. “It’s not just that every Republican should vote against it. It’s a little bit more than that. This is a career-defining vote for every Republican,” said GOP Rep. Dan Bishop, N.C.

Several prominent conservative groups also publicly opposed the bill Tuesday, and said they would measure or “score” GOP lawmakers by how they voted on it. The Koch-aligned FreedomWorks group, the anti-tax Club for Growth and the conservative Heritage Foundation all panned the deal.

Over the course of the day Tuesday, opposition to the bill evolved into a more pointed critique of McCarthy from this vocal minority in the GOP.

“Speaker McCarthy should pull this bad bill down. We should stop taking this bill up right now,” GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a member of the Rules Committee, said at a news conference. “And no matter what happens, there’s going to be a reckoning about what just occurred.”

Bishop told reporters that “no one in the Republican conference could have done a worse job” negotiating the agreement than McCarthy did.

Roy and Bishop weren’t the only far-right conservatives who implicitly threatened to unseat McCarthy as House speaker if the debt limit bill passed. But whether they follow through on the threats remains to be seen. Under new rules this year, a single Republican lawmaker can bring a no-confidence vote on McCarthy to the floor.

Several Democrats, too, panned the deal, which includes new work requirements for food stamps that many progressives said was a red line. But the White House defended the agreement Tuesday.

“It’s usually a sign of a good compromise if there’s some folks who are a little bit unhappy on each side, but I think ultimately what we have here is a good, fair deal,” National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti told CNBC.

“I think the macro economic impact of this deal is likely to be fairly minimal,” he said, adding that the deal was about as good as Biden could have hoped for in a bill that could pass the GOP-controlled House.

The Office of Management and Budget also released formal statement of policy Tuesday urging House members to support the bill, saying it “reflects a bipartisan compromise to avoid a first-ever default.”

A vote on the Fiscal Responsibility Act is planned for around 8:30 p.m. ET Wednesday, according to a tentative House voting schedule released Tuesday.

But before the bill can receive a vote in the full House, it must be approved by a majority of the 13-member House Rules Committee, which sets the rules of debate on the bill.

The committee is scheduled to meet at 3 p.m. ET on Tuesday to hash out the rules of the debt ceiling vote.

The panel’s makeup is heavily skewed toward the party in the majority, 9-4, a set up meant to ensure that legislation did not get held up by a few dissenters siding with the minority.

But it only takes three Republicans to side with the four Democrats in order to hold up the bill.

As of Tuesday afternoon, two Republican members of the Rules Committee, Roy and Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina had already said they planned to do just that.

“I’m on Rules Committee,” Norman said Tuesday outside the Capitol. “If we can stop [the bill] there, I will stop it.”

A third member of the panel, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, had yet to say whether he would support the bill.

If the Fiscal Responsibility Act were to stall in the Rules Committee, it would resurrect the imminent threat of a debt default, with less than a week before the deadline.

This is a developing story, please check back for updates.