The Details of the Last Minute Deal to Raise the Debt Ceiling

1 min readBy: Kyle Pomerleau, Andrew Lundeen

Last night, after receiving a bill from the Senate, the House approved a deal to raise the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown.

According to Reuters, these are the basic details of the law:

  • U.S. borrowing authority has been extended to February 7th. Once that date has been reached, Congress would need to raise the debt ceiling again, or the Treasury would need to start using “extraordinary measures” again, to prevent a default.
  • Federal spending, at current levels, has been extended to January 15th. This spending level still incorporates the previous cuts caused by sequestration.
  • A House-Senate bipartisan panel was created to come up with long-term deficit reduction plans. These plans will be created by December 13th, after which the need to be approved by Congress.
  • Establishes measures to prevent fraud in the payment of Obamacare subsidies.
  • Delivers back pay to federal workers due to the federal shutdown.

Due to the temporary nature of the bill, it is likely we will see a similar fight from Congress this winter or next spring.

The full 35-page bill is here.

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About the Authors

Kyle Pomerleau Tax Foundation

Kyle Pomerleau

Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Kyle Pomerleau is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies federal tax policy.

Before joining AEI, Mr. Pomerleau was chief economist and vice president of economic analysis at the Tax Foundation, where he led the macroeconomic and tax modeling team and wrote on various tax policy topics, including corporate taxation, international tax policy, carbon taxation, and tax reform.

Andrew Lundeen

Director of Federal Projects