Republican leaders in the House of Representatives, facing a conservative revolt, put off a vote today on the Bill to increase the government's debt limit, cut federal spending and avoid a potential US default.
Republican leaders in the lower chamber announced their decision to not hold a vote after abruptly halting debate on the legislation and plunging into an intensive round of meetings with rebellious conservatives.
The decision created fresh turmoil as a US government riven with division on all sides struggled to head off a default threatened after next Tuesday that would leave the Treasury without the funds needed to pay all its bills.
House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders had labored furiously to line up the 216 votes the debt bill would need to pass the House. Enough conservative Republicans, initially opposed to the Boehner Bill, had been thought to have agreed to back the measure earlier yesterday.
After hours of routine debate, the Republican leadership sent word that further work would be put off on the Bill to raise the nation's debt limit by Tuesday to allow the government to keep borrowing and pay its bills.
Few, if any, Democrats had been expected to support the measure that faces near-certain defeat in the Democratic-run Senate. President Barack Obama vowed to veto the measure should it reach his desk because it would bring the controversial debt issue up again in the middle of next year's election season.
Boehner had summoned a string of Republican critics of the Bill to his office. Later, he visited an office where lawmakers were congregating around 19 boxes of pizza that were rolled in.
A few first-term conservatives slipped into a small chapel a few paces down the hall from the Capitol Rotunda as they contemplated one of the most consequential votes of their careers.
Asked if he was seeking divine inspiration, Republican Rep. Tim Scott said that had already happened. "I was leaning no and now I am a no."
Fears that the deadlock on raising the country's cap on borrowing won't be broken forced global stock markets down yet again as investors worried that a dysfunctional Congress might remain gridlocked past the Tuesday deadline.
US stocks have fallen all week. They increased modestly for much of the day yesterday before fading, with the Dow Jones industrial average declining 0.5%, the fifth straight daily drop. Had the delay in the House vote occurred before the market closed about two hours earlier, the effect might have been dramatic.