US Republicans postpone vote on debts to meet rebels in ranks

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives, facing a conservative revolt, put off a vote on a bill to increase the government’s debt limit, cut federal spending and avoid a potential US default.

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives, facing a conservative revolt, put off a vote on a bill to increase the government’s debt limit, cut federal spending and avoid a potential US default.

Republican leaders in the lower chamber announced their decision to not hold a vote last night after abruptly halting debate on the legislation and plunging into an intensive round of meetings with rebellious conservatives.

The decision created fresh turmoil as a divided US government struggled to head off a default threatened after next Tuesday that would leave the Treasury without the funds needed to pay all its bills.

One option under review was to wait for the Democratic-controlled Senate to pass legislation first, a reversal in Republican strategy that would increase President Barack Obama’s leverage.

House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders had laboured furiously to line up the votes the debt bill would need to pass the House.

Enough conservative Republicans, initially opposed to the Boehner bill, had been thought to have agreed to back the measure earlier.

Mr Obama has threatened to veto the House bill and Senate Democrats stood by ready to scuttle the bill – if it ever got them – as a way of forcing Republicans to accept changes sought by Mr Obama.

The key stumbling block at this point, beyond the unexpected delay, is the House Republicans’ insistence that raising the debt ceiling, thereby preventing an unprecedented US default, should be contingent upon returning to the issue early next year.

That would thrust the heated issue into the midst of the 2012 election campaign. Mr Obama, who faces re-election, has insisted that the ceiling be increased sufficiently to push the issue beyond the 2012 vote.

Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz savaged the House bill as a “Republican plan for default”.

She said the Republicans hoped to “hold our economy hostage while forcing an ideological agenda” on the country.

The first sign of trouble for the House bill’s supporters occurred after hours of routine debate, when the Republican leadership suddenly halted work on the measure.

As the evening slipped by Mr Boehner had summoned a string of Republican critics of the bill to his office.

Later, he visited an office where politicians were congregating around 19 boxes of pizza that were rolled in.

With the bill in limbo, a few first-term conservatives slipped into a small chapel a few paces down the hall from the Capitol Rotunda as they contemplated one of the most consequential votes of their careers.

In the Senate, meanwhile, Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Democrat-dominated body would refuse to vote on the House bill, killing it. That would require further negotiations toward a compromise.

Fears that the deadlock on raising the country’s cap on borrowing will not be broken forced global stock markets down yet again as investors worried that a dysfunctional Congress might remain gridlocked past the Tuesday deadline.

US stocks have fallen all week. They increased modestly for much of the day yesterday before fading, with the Dow Jones industrial average declining 0.5%, the fifth straight daily drop. Had the delay in the House vote occurred before the market closed about two hours earlier, the effect might have been dramatic.

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