This debt ceiling bill garnered widespread support from conservatives, but still had skeptics. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO House passes debt ceiling bill

The House overwhelmingly passed a bill Wednesday afternoon to allow the federal government to keep borrowing money until the middle of May, as Republicans attempt to defuse the debt ceiling as political issue.

The legislation, which was unveiled last week at a House Republican retreat in Virginia, passed on a 285-144 vote.


Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday the Senate will pass the House bill without changes, noting that the legislation is “clean,” meaning it contains no spending cuts. Republicans spent 2011 insisting on matching the debt ceiling with trillions of dollars in spending reductions.

( Also on POLITICO: Reid says Senate will pass House debt bill)

The White House has said it would not block the legislation from becoming law.

“The president believes that we need to, as a country, do the responsible thing and without drama or delay, pay our bills, meet our commitments,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said after the vote. “It is certainly important to recognize that the bill that passed the House today, the position that House Republicans took beginning late last week, represents a fundamental change from a strategy they pursued up until that point…. We are glad to see that that strategy is not being pursued anymore, so this is a welcome development.”

This all means that the nation’s debt limit, once the most potent of political weapons, is off the table until May 18. Republicans hope that this focuses Washington’s attention on replacing the automatic spending cuts that hit the Defense department in March, government spending which expires at the end of March and prescriptions for entitlement reform.

In theory, the bill would also pressure the Senate to pass a budget — something it hasn’t done in several years. Under the legislation, if either chamber fails to pass a budget by April 15, its members will not get paid.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said she will author the spending plan this year. Her House counterpart, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is working on a budget that would balance the nation’s books in the next decade. His last budget came into balance in twice as long.

Republicans also hope that if the Senate does pass a budget, a conversation about entitlement reform and rewriting the Tax Code will organically bubble to the surface. If they can move ahead with drastic changes to mandatory spending and tax reform after a debate over each chamber’s budget, lifting the debt ceiling again would be an afterthought.

This debt ceiling bill garnered widespread support from conservatives, but there were still skeptics, and Democratic support was needed to pass the measure. In all, 199 Republicans and 86 Democrats voted for the bill; 33 Republicans and 111 Democrats voted no.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, the Kansas Republican recently benched by GOP leadership for rebelling against the party, voted no.

“I’d like to make sure members don’t get paid if we don’t do our job, but the idea of suspending the debt ceiling limit is something my folks would be pretty upset about,” Huelskamp told POLITICO in the basement of one of the House office buildings a few hours before the vote. “For the next 120 days, we’re going to have unlimited borrowing.

He said his vote was “just a statement” on principle, he said.

Democrats, meanwhile, hammered the language that would suspend lawmakers’ pay, saying it violates the 27th Amendment to the Constitution.

“This is totally unconstitutional,” Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) told POLITICO. “You can’t just change members’ salaries.”

The 27th Amendment prohibits lawmakers from increasing or decreasing their own salaries until the start of a new term — which theoretically keeps potentially corrupt politicians from padding their own pocketbooks.

But Republicans argue that the provision doesn’t necessary expand nor scale back member pay; it just freezes it for a bit — making the provision constitutional.

Jennifer Epstein contributed to this report.