Speaker Kevin McCarthy toiled on Wednesday to lock down the votes to pass his deal with President Biden to lift the debt ceiling and set federal spending limits, as a stream of defections from hard-right lawmakers put the fate of the measure in question. With the nation’s first-ever default looming in days, the House was on track to begin votes Wednesday afternoon on a plan to suspend the nation’s borrowing limit for two years in exchange for two years of spending caps and a string of policy concessions Republicans demanded. To muster a 218-vote majority to push it through the closely divided House, congressional leaders must cobble together a coalition of Republicans willing to back it and enough Democrats to make up for what was shaping up to be a substantial number of G.O.P. Hard-right lawmakers are in open revolt over the compromise and have vowed to try to derail it. Multiple right-wing lawmakers have savaged the bill, publicly using a profanity-laced description to compare it to a foul-tasting sandwich and arguing that it does nothing to secure the kind of deep spending cuts and rollbacks of Biden administration policies for which they have agitated.

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Persons: Kevin McCarthy toiled, Biden