Lankford, Mullin Spilt on Senate Debt Ceiling Vote

The U.S. Senate accelerated its process and moved the debt ceiling compromise bill to the floor Thursday night, passing it to President Biden. While the measure passed 63 to 36, it did split Oklahoma’s U.S. Senate delegation.

U.S. Senator James Lankford did not vote for H.R. 3746, the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

“Washington overspending is saddling future generations with more and more debt. Unfortunately this bill does not significantly change the direction of federal spending,” said Lankford. “I’ve voted for debt ceiling increases in the past when they were accompanied by spending reforms or concrete spending reductions. But instead of cutting spending, as advertised, this bill actually increases spending. There are also numerous waivers and exceptions that make the bill’s permitting and other policy changes easy for the Administration to ignore. We should come to the table like adults and have the hard conversation about our skyrocketing $31.4 trillion debt.”

(You can find Lankford’s Senate floor speech against the bill here.)

However, U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin did vote for the bill to avoid defaulting on the nation’s debts. He praised his former colleagues in the U.S. House for reaching the compromise with President Biden.

“I’ve been in business since I was 19 years old, and in business, you must be willing to negotiate. The fact is, Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans successfully negotiated the largest deficit reduction bill in American history while only controlling one seat of government — without letting Democrats raise any taxes. That’s a huge victory. This legislation secures work requirements, cuts funding for Biden’s IRS army, slashes COVID funding, and imposes top-line spending caps while fully funding veterans, Social Security, and Medicare. Today, we passed a historic and necessary bill to begin getting America’s fiscal house in order. Tomorrow, our fight continues to cut spending, shrink the size of government, and bring fiscal sanity to Washington.”

Many Washington observers believed the Senate would not vote on H.R. 3746 until this weekend.

The U.S. House approved the measure on Wednesday. The Oklahoma House delegation also was split on passing. Freshman Congressman Josh Brecheen provided the no vote, while the other four did join the 241 members who voted to send it to the Senate.

Congressman Tom Cole guided the measure through the House Rules Committee and onto the floor for that vote.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the federal government could default on its debts starting on June 5, if Congress and President Biden couldn’t raise the debt ceiling. It took spending concessions and the addition of work requirements on some social safety net programs to get a deal made with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

 


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