The national debt passed $40 trillion last month, and the $41.1 trillion statutory borrowing cap is on track to bind again within the next year. Roll Call reported Sept. 9 that House Budget Committee ranking member Brendan Boyle will not vote for another plain, temporary debt-ceiling increase. He wants his own bill attached to whatever comes next, a permanent rule letting the Treasury secretary suspend the debt limit for up to two years at a time, with Congress able to stop it only by passing a resolution telling the president no, and getting the president to sign it.
What Boyle's bill actually changes
H.R. 4634, the Debt Ceiling Reform Act, was introduced by Rep. Boyle, D-Pa., on July 23, 2025, with an identical Senate companion from Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. It does not raise the debt limit by a set dollar amount the way past increases have. It rewrites the process permanently, inserting a new Section 3101B into Title 31 of the U.S. Code.
Under that new section, the Treasury secretary could submit a written certification to Congress, no earlier than 60 days and no later than 46 days before the limit would otherwise bind, suspending the debt ceiling for up to two years. The suspension takes effect automatically 46 days after Congress receives that certification, unless both chambers pass, and the president signs, a joint resolution of disapproval within a 45-day window. Miss that window, or fail to override a veto, and the Treasury secretary borrows freely for up to two years before the cycle repeats.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent would be the official submitting the two-year suspension certifications under Boyle's bill. (U.S. Department of the Treasury, public domain)
Why the "check" is weaker than it looks on paper
Congress does keep a formal veto point built into the bill. A joint resolution of disapproval gets expedited, filibuster-proof floor procedure in both the House and Senate, so a simple majority can force a vote. That sounds like real leverage until the next step: the resolution still has to go to the president's desk. If the same administration whose Treasury secretary just requested the suspension is not inclined to sign away its own new borrowing authority, Congress needs two-thirds of both chambers to override a veto instead of the simple majority the fast-track procedure otherwise guarantees.
In practice, that turns a one-time political fight over raising the ceiling into a standing rule where the executive branch borrows by default and only a veto-proof supermajority can interrupt it. The bill's text is public and searchable in full at congress.gov, and nothing in Section 3101B requires the president's signature on the certification itself, only on Congress's attempt to stop it.
Boyle is borrowing Mitch McConnell's own idea
The mechanism did not originate with Democrats. Per Sen. Dick Durbin's own July 23, 2025 press release announcing the bill, the idea of letting the president raise the debt ceiling subject to a congressional disapproval vote was originally proposed by then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and written into the Budget Control Act of 2011, where it authorized three one-time increases to get the government past a specific standoff.
Durbin's framing makes the difference plain: "Time and time again, we have come far too close to a catastrophic default crisis, proving that our current debt ceiling process is broken and unsustainable," he said, adding that the bill "will give the Treasury the authority to suspend the debt ceiling, absent a resolution of disapproval from Congress." McConnell's 2011 version expired after its three uses. Boyle's version does not expire. It amends the permanent U.S. Code and runs every time the debt limit comes up again, for as long as the law stands.
Trump has already said he wants the ceiling gone entirely
The politics here cut against a simple partisan read. Durbin's press release cites two separate reports, from The Hill and NBC News, in which President Trump called for scrapping the debt ceiling outright to avoid what he described as an "economic catastrophe." Boyle's bill does not go that far. It keeps the debt limit on the books and keeps a disapproval mechanism in Congress's hands. But a president who wants the ceiling gone entirely has little reason to veto a bill that leaves it standing in name while letting his own Treasury secretary suspend it for two years running.
The U.S. Capitol. Congress is the body that would be trading its regular leverage over the debt limit for a supermajority veto point under H.R. 4634. (Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress, public domain)
Why Republicans left the debt limit out of their own reconciliation bill
House Republicans are running their own party-line package this fall, the roughly $95 billion "Reconciliation 3.0" framework under H. Con. Res. 113, covering defense, farm aid, intelligence, and SAVE Act-style election grants. It does not touch the debt ceiling at all. GOP leaders want that package narrow enough to limit defections, and folding in a separate, harder fight over borrowing authority would risk the whole thing.
That leaves the debt limit fight for later, possibly a "Reconciliation 4.0" package in the post-election lame-duck session, while Republicans still hold both chambers. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., a top contender to lead House Budget Republicans next Congress, told Roll Call bond market "turmoil" is forcing the issue: "I think more and more people are realizing that it's just simply unsustainable going forward." House Budget ranking member Boyle has said he will insist on his bill, or something like it, as his price for cooperating on whatever increase Republicans bring to the floor.
Official record
H.R. 4634, the Debt Ceiling Reform Act, 119th Congress, introduced July 23, 2025 by Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa. Full text via congress.gov.
"Not earlier than 60 days, and not later than 46 days, before last day of a suspension of the limit under section 3101(b) under this section... the Secretary of the Treasury shall submit to Congress a written certification specifying the end of the period during which such limit should be suspended, which shall be not later than 2 years after the otherwise applicable end of the period of the suspension of the limit." — H.R. 4634, Sec. 2(a)(1)(B), new 31 U.S.C. 3101B(b)(1)
Read or download the full 14-page bill text (PDF) · view the official bill page and status
What is actually being negotiated here
The stakes go beyond one vote to raise one number. Net interest on the debt is already projected to top $1 trillion this year, close to 19 percent of federal tax revenue, and the Congressional Budget Office expects that to reach $2 trillion and 25 percent of revenue within a decade. The 30-year Treasury bond hit 5.3 percent in mid-August, the highest in nearly two decades. Social Security and Medicare trust funds are projected to run short of full benefits by 2034, with actuaries warning steep cuts could start as soon as 2032 if Congress does not act first.
Congress last raised the debt ceiling by $5 trillion in the 2025 reconciliation law, taking it from $36.1 trillion to the current $41.1 trillion. That fight forced, at minimum, a public accounting of where the money was going. Whatever replaces that fight next, whether it is a straightforward increase, McConnell's original one-time mechanism, or Boyle's permanent version of it, will decide whether future Congresses still have to have that conversation at all, or whether a two-thirds vote becomes the only way to make them.
