Washington (AFP) – The U.S. House of Representatives will vote Wednesday on an eleventh-hour deal that would prevent a U.S. debt default, with top Republican John Boehner admitting that the “fight” is over.
Boehner, speaker in the House of Representatives said in a statement that “blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by the members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us.”
Pete Sessions, chairman of the committee that sets procedures for the House floor, said the chamber would vote on a deal worked out by Senate leaders, “but it’s got to pass the Senate first.”
The deal would also re-open the federal government, he said.
Signaling that a deal to avert an economic failure was finally within reach, Boehner told WLW Radio Cincinnati that there were “no reasons for our members to vote no today.”
“We fought the good fight, we did everything we could. They just kept saying no, no, no,” Boehner said of lawmakers in President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party.
Both the House and the Senate need to pass the legislation before it can go to the U.S. president’s desk at the White House and be signed into law.
But Boehner’s statement indicated that the deal was more a capitulation to the inevitable from Republicans, rather than a signal of any new spirit to compromise.
“The House has fought with everything it has to convince the president of the United States to engage in bipartisan negotiations aimed at addressing our country’s debt and providing fairness for the American people under ObamaCare,” it said. “Our drive to stop the train wreck that is the president’s health care law will continue.”
The agreement worked out by senators in the chaotic days running up to Thursday’s debt-ceiling deadline would stave off the most pressing crisis by extending the U.S. Treasury’s borrowing authority until February 7.
It would also immediately open shuttered federal agencies, bringing hundreds of thousands of furloughed employees back to work, and temporarily fund government through January 15.
Some time earlier, Senators and Senate leadership aides in both parties told AFP it was “likely” that their chamber would vote first.
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said the Senate might vote “after dinner,” and added that while the procedures were not set in stone, the exact vote order was not crucial.
