Washington, Feb 5 (DPA) The US Congress voted Thursday to raise the federal debt limit by an additional $1.9 trillion to prevent the government from defaulting on its skyrocketing debt levels.
The controversial increase raises the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion. The House of Representatives voted 233-187 to send the bill to President Barack Obama’s desk for signature. The Senate passed the measure last week.
As part of the initiative, Congress also toughened “pay-as-you-go” budgeting rules that will force future spending measures to be coupled with spending cuts elsewhere.
Obama in a statement said the measure “will help usher out an era of irresponsibility and begin putting the country back on a fiscally sustainable path.”
Republicans and some fiscally conservative Democrats have been outraged by unprecedented public spending efforts that have been pushed by Obama since he entered office in 2009 to help lift the US economy out of its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The federal government is likely to post a record budget deficit of $1.6 trillion in the 2010 fiscal year, which ends September 30.
Lawmakers were told by the Treasury that the US risked defaulting on its debt later this month if Congress did not raise the debt ceiling.
