WASHINGTON (UPI) – The Senate, wresting promises from the White House and untangling budget reform measures from a bill to raise the debt limit to $2.32 trillion, passed legislation Thursday to allow the government to borrow enough money to avert a federal shutdown.
White House officials said President Reagan plans to sign the debt bill, which passed the Senate 58-36. The measure was approved by the House earlier this week.
“It’s never a pleasant experience,” said Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, minutes before the latest in a series of moves to raise the debt ceiling.
But he agreed with Sen. Pete Domenici. R-N.M.. that passing the new, higher debt limit was the “sensible” thing for the Senate to do, rather than trying to attach to the bill a series of measures to alter the budget process.
Sen. Phil Gramm.,R-Texas. told reporters Thursday he was abandoning his plans to amend the debt bill to include a measure requiring automatic spending cuts in case Congress misses deficit-reduction targets set in the Gramm-Rudman balanced-budget law.
Instead, under an agreement negotiated with White House chief of staff Howard Baker, Gramm plans to delay introduction of the budget-cutting measure until the next debt-ceiling bill is ready for debate in July. In return, Reagan will support that plan and proposed reform in the budget process.
White Home spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Reagan and Republican leaders “have agreed to work for a meaningful and enforceable budget-reform process and a constitutional fix of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act.”
Reagan must sign the measure by midnight Friday, or the current $2.3 trillion debt ceiling will drop to $2.1 trillion.
The bill calls for the current debt limit of $2.3 trillion to be raised by $20 billion – enough to allow the government to borrow the money it needs for about two months.