Representatives approved the debt ceiling deal

The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to pass a bill to raise the nation's debt ceiling to January 1, 2025, as lawmakers scramble to avoid a catastrophic default.

The bill must pass the Senate before it can be sent to President Joe Biden to become law.

In the Senate, any legislator can delay a snap vote, and it is not yet known when the final vote will take place.

The deadline to pass the bill in Congress is extremely tight and there is little room for error, putting enormous pressure on leaders of both parties.

The vote at 314-117 came days before the United States was projected to exhaust its borrowing capacity, and after a marathon of talks between White House negotiators and top House and Senate Republican leaders.

President Joe Biden called on the Senate to pass “as soon as possible” the agreement ratified by the Lower House to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for cuts in public spending.

“I have made it clear that the only way forward is a bipartisan agreement that can receive bipartisan support. This deal passes the test. I encourage the Senate to approve it as soon as possible,” the president said in a statement.

In his message, Biden praised the agreement, reached this weekend, as it “protects the priorities and achievements of the last two years” Democratic government.

In this sense, the president stressed that the bill protects payments to Social Security and health care programs for vulnerable seniors.

However, some of the most progressive members of the Democratic Party have shown their rejection of some points, such as the introduction of requirements to access some food assistance programs, or the approval of a controversial project to transport natural gas from the state of West Virginia to neighboring Virginia.

The approval of the An agreement by both houses of Congress is crucial so that the country does not default on its public debt, after the debt ceiling was reached last January, the legal limit to the money that the US can borrow to meet their commitments.

Lawmakers have until June 5 to approve the measure in both chambers, the date on which the Treasury Department estimates that the country will exhaust its reserves.

Suspending the debt limit until 2025 removes the threat of default until after the presidential election.

In addition to addressing the debt limit, the bill limits non-debt spending advocacy, expands work requirements for some food stamp recipients, and recovers some COVID-19 relief funds, among other policy provisions.