Several Republicans, however, have said they do not feel the same urgency to take up the debt limit, amid a December pileup of unfinished legislative work. In the evenly divided Senate, at least 10 Republicans would need to join Democrats to ensure such a measure could advance absent a move to use the reconciliation process.
“I don’t think the debt limit issue is until sometime next year,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said at a news conference last month.
Asked about the debt limit, Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said, “I think it’s more important to get the government funded, and I think that might become an obstacle to doing that.”
Agreement on a government funding package has remained elusive, jeopardizing lingering hopes of attaching not only a debt limit measure but a list of legislative priorities. With the funding package left as the lone must-pass measure, lawmakers are…
