US' Daschle says Senate to take up 450 bln usd debt limit increase soon
WASHINGTON (AFX) - US Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said he has taken a procedural step so that the Senate would be able to take up legislation to increase the debt ceiling by 450 bln usd sometime this month.
"We are now required to extend the debt limit by 450 bln usd just to get into next year," Daschle told reporters on Capitol Hill, adding the Senate will "take up the debt limit legislation sometime in the next couple of weeks."
The Treasury Department has called on Congress to raise the debt ceiling by 750 bln usd as soon as possible. A Treasury spokeswoman said if it is not raised by June 28, when a large Social Security payment is due, the federal debt will breach the current 5.95 trln usd debt ceiling.
The House of Representatives last month passed a measure to raise the debt limit as part of a broader emergency spending package aimed at boosting counter-terrorism efforts. The House language did not include a specific figure for increase, but rather included a promise to maintain the "full faith and credit" of the United States.
Daschle said "it doesn't look like it" will be taken up in the Senate as part of the emergency spending measure, known as the supplemental, but would be taken up under a separate "package where we dealt with all the other questions involving the budget."
Late Tuesday, the White House threatened to veto the 31.4 bln usd emergency spending package that is under consideration in the Senate because it exceeds the president's request by more than 4.0 bln usd for "lower priority non-emergency programs."
Daschle criticized the Bush administration's 750 bln usd debt limit increase request for failing to include a proposal for bringing the budget back into balance and blamed the administration's 2001 tax cuts for bringing the debt to current levels.
"Revenues are not coming nearly as fast as this administration anticipated," Daschle said, "so we are now dealing with those consequences with an increase in the debt limit to accommodate the tax cut."
The Treasury says so-called "entitlement programs" Social Security and Medicare, which are not part of general government revenues and spending, are the reasons for the increase in the federal debt level. Social Security surpluses are invested in special Treasury securities, which are included in the overall debt limit measure.
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