Push to get lawmakers’ support on debt ceiling deal

Political leaders appeared bullish on Monday that they could sell a bipartisan compromise debt ceiling deal to enough lawmakers – overcoming criticism from left and right – to avert a first-ever national default on the $31.4tn the US owes creditors.

Despite the diplomacy and even arm-twisting still required this week, Joe Biden left the White House to head to Delaware on Monday. The president declared: “There is no reason why it should not be done by the fifth,” referring to Congress passing legislation on the debt ceiling before the US is predicted by the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, to run out of money to pay its bills after 5 June.

But the deal, agreed by the Democratic president and the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, last weekend after weeks of tense, stop-start negotiations, has left some in Washington questioning if they had received enough concessions.

The 99-page bill needed their support at a crucial vote in the House of Representatives and, later in the week or even into the weekend, in the US Senate, to then be signed by Biden and avoid a payments default as soon as next Monday.