Republican leaders in the House of Representatives are scrambling to quash a rebellion among some of their rank-and-file members over opposition to the party’s plan to raise the debt ceiling as the US continues veering towards a possible default.
Heightened uncertainty over whether the country’s borrowing authority would be raised by early next week has gripped Capitol Hill and unnerved financial markets.
With a vote expected today on the two-stage proposal, it was not clear whether there would be sufficient Republican backing to pass the legislation, since House Democrats are virtually united in opposition. The vote was delayed by a day while Republicans hastily tried to rewrite the bill after the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan body that assesses the cost or savings of legislation, estimated that their plan would cut deficits by $850bn over the next decade – less than they had been hoping for.