Senate Vote Approves Rise in Debt Limit

By ROBERT PEAR

Published: January 26, 2012

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted on Thursday to allow a further increase in the federal debt limit, permitting President Obama to borrow $1.2 trillion more to operate a government that spent about 55 percent more than it collected in revenue last year.

Related

• Budget Wars Are Revived With a Vote in the House(January 19, 2012)

• Times Topics: Federal Debt Ceiling | Federal Budget (Payroll Tax Cut Extension Debate)

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The 52-to-44 vote generally followed party lines, with Democrats supporting the increase in borrowing authority and Republicans opposed.

In the House last week, Republicans passed a “resolution of disapproval” to stop the increase in the debt limit. But the Senate refused on Thursday to take up that measure.

The upshot is that the debt limit will rise immediately to $16.4 trillion, from the current ceiling of $15.2 trillion.

House Republicans, led by Speaker John A. Boehner, boast that they have changed the conversation in Washington so that lawmakers focus on how to cut spending.

But Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, complained that the Senate was allowing the debt limit to rise in a perfunctory way, with little debate.

“Little has changed in Washington in the last five years,” Mr. Coburn said. “We’ve argued, debated and lamented on how to rein in the federal government’s costs and out-of-control spending. All the time that was going on, we were on a spending binge, spending money we do not have on things we do not need. Even though we knew we had to borrow more money, Congress has done nothing to avoid raising the debt limit further. Nothing.”

The 2009 economic stimulus law set the debt limit at $12.1 trillion. Congress increased the limit in December 2009 and February 2010 and again last summer, as part of a bipartisan budget agreement.

Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, defended the new increase in the debt limit, saying it would not authorize additional spending, but just ensure that the United States could honor past commitments.

“Increasing the debt limit permits the Treasury Department to pay the bills we have already incurred,” Mr. Baucus said.

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said that many Republicans who voted against the increase in the debt ceiling had also voted in recent years to spend more on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and on domestic programs.

Mr. Durbin admonished his colleagues: “Don’t vote for the spending if you won’t vote for the borrowing, because we know now that they are linked together. They are one and the same.”

In an address to Congress in February 2009, a week after signing the economic stimulus law, Mr. Obama said he would “cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office.”

Republicans said Thursday that Mr. Obama was far from that goal. The deficit — $1.3 trillion in each of the last two fiscal years — has declined slightly from 2009, when it totaled $1.4 trillion.

The federal budget deficit is the difference between money spent and money collected by the government in a single year, while the debt represents amounts borrowed by the government over many years to fill those gaps.

With the latest increase in the debt limit, Republicans said, the debt will cross a significant threshold, as it will be roughly the same size as the economy, measured by the gross domestic product.

About two-thirds of the debt is held by the public in the form ofTreasury bills, notes and bonds. The rest consists mainly of special-issue government securities held by trust funds for Social Security,Medicare and other programs.

The Treasury still finds that it can borrow at extraordinarily low interest rates. But Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, said the United States should learn from the experiences of European countries that spent beyond their means.