Setting the Tone for Appropriations and Farm Bill Debates to Come, Republicans Win Key Priorities in Debt Ceiling Deal. Rural America Will Feel the Impacts.
Republicans rolled back the safety net, boosted pipelines and fossil fuel extraction, and protected corporate meatpackers from liability this week. And they're not even in the majority.
The U.S. House and Senate voted this week to raise the federal debt ceiling from its current $31.5 trillion limit, avoiding a default until at least January 2025. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill today (June 2, 2023).
Democratic President Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) deal raises the debt ceiling in exchange for domestic spending cuts, enacts new hurdles through work requirements for SNAP participation, reduces IRS funding, claws back billions in Democrats’ pandemic aid, supports fossil fuel expansion, greenlights the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and limits federal authority to regulate meatpacking corporations.
The Senate voted 63-36 Thursday to support the Biden-McCarthy deal. 46 Democrats and 17 Republicans supported the bill. The bill was opposed by 31 Republicans and 5 Democrats, including Senators John Fetterman (D-PA), Ed Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
The Senate rejected numerous amendments to the bill, including a 69-30 defeat for Senator Tim Kaine’s (D-VA) proposal to strike a provision “expediting completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.”
The House of Representatives passed the Biden-McCarthy debt ceiling deal Wednesday 314-117. 149 House Republicans and 165 House Democrats supported the debt ceiling increase. 71 Republicans and 46 Democrats opposed the bill.
The White House, Democratic-controlled Senate, and Republican-controlled House will be negotiating the fiscal year 2024 appropriations and federal Farm Bill re-authorization under the new limits won by Republicans in the debt ceiling deal. The Cocklebur will continue to report on the impacts of these budget impacts on rural people and rural communities.
The Cocklebur covers rural policy and politics from a progressive point-of-view. Our work focuses on a tangled rural political reality of dishonest debate, economic and racial disparities, corporate power over our democracy, and disinformation peddled by conservative media outlets. We aim to use facts, data, and science to inform our point-of-view. We wear our complicated love/WTF relationship with rural America on our sleeve.