Democratic and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have reached an agreement to extend the US debt ceiling through to early December, providing short-term relief to investors and executives who had fretted about the possibility of a US government default as soon as this month.
“We have reached an agreement to extend the debt ceiling through early December, and it is our hope that we can get this done as soon as today,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, told lawmakers on Thursday morning. A draft of the proposed agreement, which needs to be approved by both chambers of Congress, showed it would increase the public debt limit by $480bn.
The deal came a day after Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, said his party would back a short-term extension to the nation’s borrowing limit. Republicans have for months rejected Democrats’ appeals for them to sign on to raising the debt ceiling, seeking to tie the country’s existing debt to the Biden administration’s ambitious spending plans.