U.S. President Joe Biden has signed the bill to temporarily suspend the national debt ceiling in the U.S. This was announced by the White House on Saturday in Washington. Congress had previously voted in favor of the project, thus preventing an imminent default. Biden now had to sign the law into law. In a statement, the White House explicitly thanked the majority leaders of both parties in Congress "for their partnership."

Long nail-biters and party-political battles

The law stipulates that the debt ceiling will be suspended until 2025. Most recently, it was around 31.4 trillion dollars (about 29.1 trillion euros). At the same time, government spending will be limited over the next two years. The Republicans, however, were unable to prevail with their demands for significant spending cuts.

Only after a long nail-biter and bitter partisan political battles did Biden's Democrats agree on a compromise with the Republicans. Without this, the government would have run out of money on Monday, according to the Ministry of Finance. A default by the world's largest economy could have triggered a global financial crisis and an economic downturn.

The U.S. had already reached the statutory debt limit in January. Since then, the government has prevented a default with so-called extraordinary measures. In the meantime, however, the possibilities for this had almost been exhausted.