US Senate set to pass debt limit suspension bill Thursday night

The expectation is that the amendments will not garner enough support to be attached to the legislation. If any one of them does, the measure would have to be sent back to the House of Representatives, which could increase the possibility of a first-ever default on Washington's debt payments.

Schumer and his Republican counterpart Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to do all they could to speed along the bill negotiated by Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, which would suspend the debt limit, essentially temporarily removing it, in exchange for a cap on spending.

The Treasury Department has warned it will be unable to pay all its bills on June 5 if Congress fails to act.

Treasury technically hit the statutory $31.4 trillion limit on borrowing in January. Since then it has been utilizing "extraordinary measures" to patch together the money needed to pay the government's bills.

For the past five months Democrats and Republicans have jousted over the debt limit. Republicans, who control the House with a narrow majority, have insisted that wide-ranging cuts in government spending be part of any deal raising the debt limit.

Meantime, Biden, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and congressional leaders all acknowledged that triggering a debt default for lack of funds would have serious ramifications.

Schumer drove that point home even at this late hour as he steered the bill toward final passage.

A default, he said, "would almost certainly cause another recession. It would be a nightmare for our economy and millions of American families. It would take years, years to recover from."

The Republican-controlled House passed the bill on Wednesday evening in a 314-117 vote. McCarthy lost the support of dozens of his fellow Republicans.

"Time is a luxury the Senate does not have," Schumer said on Thursday. "Any needless delay or any last-minute holdups would be an unnecessary and even dangerous risk."

Biden's Democrats control the Senate by a thin 51-49 margin. The chamber's rules require 60 votes to advance most legislation, meaning at least nine Republican votes are needed to pass most bills, including the debt ceiling deal.

Among the amendments to be debated are ones to force deeper spending cuts than those contained in the House-passed bill and to stop the speedy final approval of a West Virginia energy pipeline.

Republican Senator Roger Marshall offered an amendment to impose new border controls amid high numbers of immigrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. His measure, he said, would "put an end to the culture of lawlessness at our southern border."

The Senate defeated the amendment, however, after Democrats said it would strip away protections for child migrants and rob American farmers of needed workers.

Republicans also want to beef up defense spending beyond the increased levels contained in the House-passed bill.

Schumer stated that the spending caps contained in this legislation will not constrain Congress in approving additional money for emergencies, including helping Ukraine in its battle against Russia.

"This debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate's ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia, and our other adversaries, and respond to ongoing and growing national security threats, including Russia's evil ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine," Schumer said.

The bill was cobbled together over weeks of intensive negotiations between surrogates for Biden and McCarthy. The main argument was over spending for the next couple years on "discretionary" programs, such as housing, environmental protections, education and medical research that Republicans wanted to cut deeply while seeking increases in funding for the military, veterans and possibly border security.

In the end, the Republican spending-cut proposals were significantly pared.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would save $1.5 trillion over 10 years. That is below the $4.8 trillion in savings that Republicans aimed for in a bill they passed through the House in April, and also below the $3 trillion in deficit that Biden's proposed budget would have reduced the deficit over that time through new taxes.

The last time the United States came this close to default was in 2011. That standoff hammered financial markets, led to the first-ever downgrade of the government's credit rating and pushed up the nation's borrowing costs.