Senate Votes to Extend Debt Ceiling After Reagan Vows to Back Reform
The Senate yesterday approved a temporary extension of the U.S. debt ceiling after President Reagan promised conservative Republican senators he will support their efforts to enact budget reforms when Congress takes up a long-term debt measure in mid-July.</br></br>The legislation adopted yesterday on a 58-to-36 vote has already passed the House. It gives the United States an additional $20 billion in borrowing authority through July 17, and averts a government financial crisis that would have begun at midnight tonight.</br></br>Under the agreement reached with the White House, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) postponed for two months his drive to tighten the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law requiring systematic reductions in the federal deficit. In exchange he said he received White House backing to use the long-term debt extension legislation as a vehicle to press for this change and for other budget reforms.</br></br>The postponement is also viewed by senior administration officials as an opportunity to forge simultaneously a compromise with the Democratic-controlled Congress on the $1 trillion fiscal 1988 budget nearing approval on Capitol Hill.</br></br>The White House and Congress remain deeply divided over the shape of that spending plan, particularly its call for an $18 billion tax increase, which Reagan has promised to veto, and a level of defense spending considerably below that sought by the administration.