The House voted Tuesday evening to create a bicameral, bipartisan committee — shades of the failed “supercommittee” from the 2011 budget agreement — to figure out a deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling and resolve other fiscal disagreements.
The plan passed 224-197, largely along party lines. An accompanying bill to pay essential federal employees as regularly scheduled passed unanimously. The two bills were then merged and will now be sent jointly to the Senate.
As TPM reported earlier, the bills are likely dead-on-arrival in the Senate, where Democratic leadership dismissed the move as a “gimmick.” The White House has also threatened to veto the bills.
