Kevin McCarthy’s victory lap over the debt ceiling bill could end early

After the debt ceiling bill was passed, Kevin McCarthy brushed off questions of the bill’s popularity among House Democrats. Photograph: Gripas Yuri/Abaca/Shutterstock

Kevin McCarthy was all smiles on Wednesday night after the House passed the debt ceiling bill, crafted by the Republican speaker and Joe Biden, in a resounding, bipartisan vote of 314 to 117.

“I’ve been thinking about this day before my vote for speaker because I knew the debt ceiling was coming,” McCarthy told reporters. “I wanted to make history. I wanted to do something no other Congress has done, that we would literally turn the ship and for the first time in quite some time, we’d spend less than we spent the year before. Tonight, we all made history.”