Which Republicans Could Vote For A Debt Ceiling Increase?
Feb. 22, 2023, at 6:00 AM
Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins — long-tenured moderates — are among the Senate Republicans most likely to support legislation that increases the debt ceiling. Nothing is certain in this life, but the United States will definitely need to raise its debt ceiling later this year to avoid a potentially calamitous debt default. On one side, President Biden and Democrats want a “clean” debt limit increase, while Republicans want future decreases in spending included in any deal.
To avoid a default, the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House will have to reach a compromise. This is neither new nor unprecedented. There have been 20 votes on increases to or suspensions of the debt ceiling since 2001, 12 occurring under a divided government. In each case, a deal was reached.
Some in the GOP have made it clear that they won’t vote to raise the borrowing limit this time, even if they can enact all the cuts they desire. And not one Republican sitting in the current Congress backed a debt ceiling hike in the last Congress — although a few GOP senators voted to bypass a filibuster.1 However, about 3 in 5 Republicans currently in Congress have at some point voted for a deal that included a debt ceiling increase. So even though Republicans have been less likely than Democrats to back legislation that included raising or suspending the debt ceiling, some are still willing to do so.
Who are these Republican senators and representatives? In what facets of the party can a compromise be reached? We dug into the voting history and ideological makeup of congressional Republicans to find out.
House RepublicansHere at the start, House Republicans appear united in their opposition to a clean debt ceiling hike, whether we’re talking about the most right-wing or more centrist members. We looked at the final roll call votes on the 20 bills that included a debt ceiling increase since the start of George W. Bush’s presidency and calculated how often current members of the House supported them. Unsurprisingly, the more conservative a member’s voting record, the less likely they’ve been to vote yes on a debt limit hike, as the chart below shows. (Although we must remember that some legislation simply raised the ceiling while other bills contained many additional components.)
!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var a in e.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;rOwl Media Group takes pride in providing social-first platforms which equally benefit and facilitate engagement between businesses and consumers and creating much-needed balance to make conducting business, easier, safer, faster and better. The vision behind every platform in the Owl Media suite is to make lives better and foster a healthy environment in which parties can conduct business efficiently. Facilitating free and fair business relationships is crucial for any thriving economy and Owl Media bridges the gap and open doors for transparent and successful transacting. No advertising funds influence the functionality of our media platforms because we value authenticity and never compromise on quality no matter how lucrative the offers from advertisers may seem.
Originally posted on: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/which-republicans-could-vote-for-a-debt-ceiling-increase/