United States

Raising the debt ceiling, capping spending, and the efforts of the “super committee”

On July 31, just two days before the deadline, an agreement was reached by the White House and congressional leaders that called for an increase of about $2.4 trillion to the debt ceiling through November 2012, to be imposed in stages. The agreement provided for an immediate increase of $400 billion, with an additional $500 billion to come after September 2011. This combined initial increase of $900 billion would be offset by budget cuts of some $917 billion that would result from an immediate cap on domestic and defense spending. The deal, which did not provide for tax increases, also stipulated that both houses of Congress had to vote on an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced budget. The final bill was approved by the House of Representatives by a vote of 269–161 (with centrists from both parties largely voting for it, while many of those farther on the right and left voted against it) and by the Senate by a bipartisan vote of 74–26. Yet despite these efforts, on August 5 Standard & Poor’s, one of the three principal companies that advise investors on debt securities, downgraded the credit rating of the United States from the top level, AAA, to the next level, AA+.

The bill also created a congressional “super committee” tasked with recommending by the end of November 2011 the measures by which an additional $1.2 to $1.5 trillion would be cut from the deficit over a 10-year period. If the committee had agreed on a set of proposals and had those proposals been approved by Congress, the debt ceiling would have been raised by a commensurate amount. In the event, however, the super committee failed to arrive at a consensus plan, which, according to the stipulations of the bill, triggered some $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts (evenly divided between defense and nondefense spending) to be implemented in 2013.