Since our show last Saturday, the big news is that the President signed into law a bill called The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. It suspends the public debt limit through January 1, 2025, after the 2024 presidential elections. The President said “No one got everything they wanted. But the American people got what they needed." The Republican-controlled House voted 314 to 117 to approve the bill, and the Democrat-controlled Senate voted 63 to 36. The legislation caps spending for the next two years and includes conservative measures to claw back about $28 billion in unspent Covid relief funds, as well as eliminating $1.4 billion in IRS funding and shifting roughly $20 billion of the $80 billion the IRS got through the Inflation Reduction Act to nondefense funding. It also restarts federal student loan payments after a long pause that began at the start of the pandemic, and adds work requirements for people up to age 55 to get benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, with carve-outs for veterans and homeless people. The current threshold is 50 years old. I am thankful the default didn’t happen; it would have been catastrophic for our country and around the world. Fingers crossed things go better in 2025 when this debt ceiling will be revisited.
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