Senate approves raising the public debt ceiling to $ 2.5 trillion by 2022

Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Senate Democrats approved a measure Tuesday to increase the ceiling of the public debt in $ 2.5 trillion dollars, taking the step that should be avoided a possible default on payments and postponing the fiscal fight until after the elections of 2022.

The Democrats’ vote with only 50 votes came less than a week later for legislators to reach a bipartisan agreement that allowed Democrats to adopt the increase in the debt ceiling and Republicans to oppose it, without putting the country at risk of Missing a critical deadline of 15 December .

The main Democratic and Republican leaders of the Congress indicated on Tuesday of last week that they had closed a deal for raise the country’s public debt ceiling , deciding on a complicated legislative maneuver to help them avoid another high-risk battle and prevent the United States government from experiencing a catastrophic default .

The apparent engagement arrived eight days before a critical fiscal deadline, avoiding what would have been another political and economic crisis for the United States.

It is expected that House lawmakers vote and pass the bill Tuesday night. If so, it will go to the signature of President Joe Biden .

The debt ceiling is the amount that the US government can borrow to pay its bills.

Unless Congress raises or suspends that cap, the country will eventually be unable to meet its financial obligations, a catastrophic event that experts say could plunge the nation into another economic recession.

The debt of the United States reached almost $ 29 trillion dollars in early December, according to the Treasury Department.

The House of Representatives adopted the measure on Tuesday of last week.

The Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen , had warned lawmakers in November that it estimated the United States would reach its debt limit on 15 December, nearly two weeks after her initial forecast that that date would be December 3.

Yellen had warned that a failure of Congress to raise the debt ceiling would lead to a recession and put the US dollar in danger as a world reserve currency.

It may interest you:

– 14 Republican senators joined to advance the project to raise the ceiling of the public debt

– Biden signed the law that increases the ceiling of the US debt . until December

– Biden convened an alliance of large banks to pressure congressmen to raise the debt ceiling