Divided House Votes to Raise Federal Debt Limit

Congress lurched Thursday toward ending its postelection session in the same way it behaved before the election: with partisan wrangling.

This time, the battle was over a one-sentence bill to raise the federal debt limit.

The House voted 208 to 204 Thursday night to send President Bush a bill to increase the limit on the government’s borrowing authority by $800 billion -- but only after Democrats accused Republicans, who control Congress, of lacking fiscal discipline.

With the bill’s signing, the debt ceiling will be almost $8.2 trillion -- about $2.4 trillion more than when Bush took office in 2001.

The White House issued a statement saying the president planned to sign the bill, calling it “important to protect the full faith and credit” of the U.S.

The debt limit increase came as House and Senate negotiators worked to wrap up the last necessary piece of unfinished business in the lame-duck session: a $388-billion bill funding dozens of Cabinet departments and agencies for the 2005 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.

The House approved the debt limit increase on a largely party-line vote. All California Republicans voted for the bill; all members of the state’s Democratic delegation voted against it, except four who did not vote: Calvin M. Dooley of Hanford, Robert T. Matsui of Sacramento, Juanita Millender-McDonald of Carson and Pete Stark of Hayward.

The Senate had approved the measure 52 to 44 Wednesday after Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.)made debt limit the subject of his first speech on the Senate floor since his losing presidential campaign. California’s two senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both Democrats, voted against the increase.

Congress acted as the Treasury Department warned it was running out of ways to keep the debt limit from being breached. Failing to raise the ceiling would have caused an unprecedented default on payments to holders of government bonds.

Republicans had put off the politically difficult vote until after the election, fearing the issue would call attention to the record federal budget deficit -- $413 billion for the 2004 fiscal year. They also wanted to find a way to increase the debt limit without having to directly vote in favor of doing so, hoping it would be slipped into the massive spending bill expected to clear Congress in the next few days.

But GOP leaders couldn’t put the issue off any longer. Democrats, looking ahead to the 2006 congressional elections, are seeking to position themselves as the more responsible guardian of the public purse. They complained that it was the third increase in the debt limit since Bush took office in 2001 with a budget surplus of $127 billion.

“Republicans’ irresponsible policies have left them no choice but to raise the limit on the amount of debt America can incur,” said House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.).

But Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.) argued that the debt limit was a function of “past decisions made by previous administrations and Congresses over decades.” He and other Republicans warned that refusing to increase the debt limit would be fiscally irresponsible.