CompaniesBIO

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy released a debt limit bill Wednesday that he hopes to pass with Republican support, triggering a frantic push to gather the votes in his narrow majority. “We are introducing the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said on the House floor, adding that it would “responsibly raise the debt limit into next year” and save trillions of dollars. The proposal to avert default would be tied to conservative policies, including cutting federal spending to 2022 levels, limiting growth to 1% per year, repealing enhanced IRS enforcement funding, undoing President Joe Biden's federal student debt forgiveness and rescinding unspent pandemic relief funds, McCarthy said. McCarthy told reporters it would lift the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion or extend it through March 31, “whichever comes first.” The 320-page bill, published moments after his speech, will be led by House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, he said. It's not...

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of House lawmakers released an outline Wednesday for raising the debt ceiling , providing a competing option to the emerging Republican-only plan. The proposal is vague. It outsources the task of finding ways to reduce the deficit in the short term to appropriators in a government funding bill and kicks the job of proposing long-term solutions to a new independent commission. It was released as a one-page summary. The plan by the Problem Solvers Caucus — led by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J. — would suspend the debt ceiling through Dec. 31, 2023, allowing the U.S. to pay its bills and buy time for congressional leaders to negotiate a spending bill with unspecified “deficit stabilization controls.” In addition, the lawmakers propose to create a fiscal commission “to review and recommend a package to stabilize long-term deficits and debt” by Dec. 31, 2024, which will get an expedited up-or-down vote in Congress by Feb. 28, 20...

WASHINGTON — Congress is making no progress on how to avert a debt ceiling crisis, and the recent collapses of some banks are deepening the stalemate. President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., met Feb. 1 to discuss the debt limit, but they haven’t met since then. McCarthy wants Biden to accede to spending cuts as a condition for raising the debt ceiling. Biden maintains that paying the country’s bills is nonnegotiable and is demanding that McCarthy first specify what spending he wants to cut, which he hasn’t done. And the recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, which have created jitters in the financial sector, have only entrenched the conflicting views between the parties. Republicans say the bank failures were caused by high inflation and rising interest rates, describing the economic landscape as a validation of their demands for spending cuts in the debt ceiling debate. How UBS’s acquisition of Credit Suisse is affecting bank shares March ...