Senate passes / Obama signs Debt ceiling - deficit reduction measure 74 - 26 vote

Senate gave final approval to a hotly contested debt and deficit-reduction agreement hammered out with the White House Sunday night.
The bipartisan 74-26 roll call followed a 269-161 vote in the House Monday evening and the bill was quickly signed by President Barack Obama, ending an unprecedented, hard-edged political struggle that pushed the nation to the brink of default.
Indeed, the stakes were far larger than the April shutdown fight, and more than any single event this year, the debt ceiling fight captured all the power—and critics would say extreme risk-taking—of the anti-government backlash that fueled the GOP’s gains in the 2010 elections.
“It was a long and contentious debate” said Obama. “And I want to thank the American people for keeping up the pressure on their elected officials to put politics aside and work together.”
“It may have been messy. It might have appeared to some like their government wasn’t working,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell minutes before the vote. “But, in fact, the opposite was true. The push and pull Americans saw in Washington these past few weeks was not gridlock. It was the will of the people working itself out in a political system that was never meant to be pretty…It was a debate that Washington needed to have.”
Pretty it wasn’t—late night weekend sessions, insults, multiple press conferences by a besieged president, all played out in the hottest July in Washington’s records.
Down to the end, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl angrily protested the defense spending cuts assumed in the package, but he and other top Republicans fell in line behind McConnell, who stepped forward over the weekend to help craft the compromise with Vice President Joe Biden.
The vote breakdown showed the bipartisan effort behind the deal — 45 Democrats and 28 Republicans voted yes — yet it also showed the continued resistance from conservatives as 19 Republicans voted no. Six Democrats also voted against the bill, along with Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60503.html#ixzz1TxCrCqEh