Washington, Jun 3 (EFE).- The president of the United States, Joe Biden, signed this Saturday the agreement reached between the White House and the Republicans to raise the debt ceiling until 2025, thus preventing the country from going into suspension of payments.
“We are going to continue the work of building the strongest economy in the world,” the president wrote in a tweet, accompanied by a video of him signing the agreement in the Oval Office.
With Biden’s ratification, the country will avoid the suspension of payments that would have been generated as soon as Monday if Congress had not reached an agreement to raise the debt ceiling, which sets the limit to the money that the US can request. provided and can only be increased or suspended by legislative action.
Biden says he saves the country “from a recession”
President Biden said the default “would have been catastrophic” and sent the country “into a recession” in an address to the nation last night,
The agreement to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for some caps on public spending was reached last weekend.
The agreement was made in a time-trial negotiation between the White House and the Republicans in the Lower House, led by Kevin McCarthy.
The measure suspends the debt ceiling for the next two years, until after the November 2024 presidential elections.
Specifically, it suspends the current debt limit of $31.4 trillion until January 1, 2025.
In return, the agreement reached over the weekend between Biden and the Republicans in the Lower House contemplates, among other things, caps on spending on programs financed by Congress in areas such as health, education, justice or environmental protection.
Harden labor requirements
In parallel, it cuts part of the new funds that were going to be allocated to the public Treasury to reallocate them to items other than defense and contemplates the resumption of payments by university students for the debt they have accumulated.
Under that pact, non-defense spending will stay the same in fiscal year 2024 and increase 1% in fiscal year 2025.
The measure will toughen the work requirements to access social benefits, such as food stamps, and rescinds 28,000 million unspent dollars that had been allocated to relief programs against the pandemic.
The debt ceiling had been reached
The approval of the agreement in Congress and the subsequent signing of Biden was crucial so that the country did not default on its public debt, after the debt ceiling was reached last January, the legal limit on money that the US The US can borrow to meet its commitments.
