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Senate Republicans sow disinformation after $480bn US debt ceiling deal | The Guardian

Top Republicans in the Senate are advancing a campaign of disinformation over the debt ceiling as they seek to distort the reasons for needing to raise the nation’s borrowing cap, after they dropped their blockade on averting a US debt default in a bipartisan manner.

The Senate on Thursday passed a bill to allow the debt ceiling to be raised by $480bn through early December, which the treasury department estimates will be enough to allow the government to temporarily avert an unprecedented default on $28tn of debt obligations.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer announced the morning before its passage that he had reached a deal with the Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell to clear the way for the vote on a short-term extension with GOP support.

The movement came after McConnell made a tactical retreat to back down from weeks of refusal to allow Democrats to raise the debt ceiling by any measure other than through a complicated procedure known as reconciliation that would have required a party-line vote.

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said on the floor: “Unfortunately, Republicans blinked.”

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Source: Senate Republicans sow disinformation after $480bn US debt ceiling deal | The Guardian