(WASHINGTON) — After weeks of brinkmanship, the Senate voted Thursday night to raise the debt limit by $480 billion until Dec. 3.

The procedural move to break the GOP filibuster, which required 60 votes, was the first hurdle cleared, with a final count of 61-38. At least 10 Republicans needed to side with all Democrats to clear the hurdle to move forward to a final vote; 11 ultimately voted to advance the vote.

Democrats then raised the debt limit with a simple majority — 50-48. No Republican voted w/ Democrats to raise the debt ceiling.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced earlier in the day that Democrats and Republicans had reached an agreement to avert the U.S. defaulting on its debt for the first time.

“We have reached an agreement to extend the debt ceiling through early December, and it’s our hope that we can get this done as soon as today,” Schumer said Thursday morning, referring to a Senate vote.

McConnell followed Schumer and confirmed the deal was close to a vote — with the GOP leader claiming credit for saving the American people from default and the Democrats from themselves.

“The Senate is moving toward the plan I laid out last night to spare the American people a manufactured crisis,” he said.

Republican leaders initially struggled to find 10 GOP votes to break the filibuster following weeks of messaging to members that Democrats should go it alone.

But 11 Republicans ultimately voted to advance the debt ceiling vote. They were: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, West Virginia Sen. Shelly Moore Capito and Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso.

The agreement to raise the debt ceiling by $480 billion gives the Treasury Department the borrowing authority it says is needed to get the government through to Dec. 3.

The Senate deal comes a little more than a week before Oct. 18 — the date Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pegged as when the U.S. will no longer be able to cover its debts. Dec. 3 is the expiration date of the stopgap government funding bill needed to keep the government running.

The deal also comes as Democrats are still working to pass President Joe Biden’s sweeping domestic policy agenda, paving the way for a busy two months.

Some Republicans have privately expressed frustration with McConnell, after following GOP messaging for weeks that Democrats would have to raise the debt ceiling on their own.

“In the end, we’ll be there,” Thune, the Republican Whip, said. “It’ll be a painful birthing process.”

Before the debt hike hits Biden’s desk, it also needs to pass the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hinted in a letter Thursday night that the House may have to return early from recess to vote on the debt ceiling legislation. The House was expected to return Oct. 19 — one day after Yellen warned lawmakers the U.S. would default — so it’s likely they will have to come back sometime next week.

Real-world consequences of the U.S. defaulting could include delays to Social Security payments and checks to service members, a suspension of veterans’ benefits and rising interest rates on credit cards, car loans and mortgages.

After White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s lukewarm reception to McConnell’s offers on Wednesday, the White House appeared more receptive on Thursday, now that Democrats on the Hill signaled their agreement.

“This is a positive step forward, the debt ceiling, short term deal that we’re seeing and it gives us some breathing room from the catastrophic default we were approaching because of Senator McConnell’s decision to play politics with our economy,” deputy press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.

Pressed on the change in tone, she said, “This is a temporary respite, but we’re not going to let up until Senator McConnell stops obstructing and allows us to put this behind us for good.”

Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say if the White House would sign on to Democrats beginning the budget reconciliation process for a longer-term debt ceiling fix, considering they’ll have more time now to navigate the complicated process, but it’s clear a longer-term solution will be needed.

“We’ll defer to them on the process,” she said of congressional Democrats, “But as the agreement shows there’s no, there’s nothing stopping Congress from addressing the debt limit, through regular order, which is what we have been asking for.”

Mariam Khan contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz.) — There was no significant 2020 election fraud in Arizona’s Maricopa County, partisan election reviewers again acknowledged in testimony before Congress on Thursday.

The state Senate-ordered review of the county’s presidential election published its findings in September, nearly 11 months after the election, and came to the same conclusion Maricopa County did: President Joe Biden won the county.

“The most significant findings of the audit is that the hand count of the physical ballots very closely matches the county’s official results in the presidential and U.S. Senate races,” former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who served as the Senate’s liaison with auditors, said in his testimony.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee had invited Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the cyber security group that conducted the review but had never managed an election audit before it was hired in Maricopa County. Logan himself had disputed the results of the election after it was certified by election officials and Congress in January, although he has since deleted the Twitter account where he posted them. He declined to appear in front of the committee to testify.

“I invited the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, Doug Logan, to testify to give him the opportunity to defend his company’s actions to Congress and the American people. Unfortunately, less than 36 hours before the hearing, Mr. Logan informed the Committee that he is refusing to appear,” committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said in a statement. “Clearly, Mr. Logan doesn’t want to answer tough questions under oath about the highly questionable, partisan audit that his company led.”

The review, which took over five months, was paid for largely through private fundraising groups that raked in upwards of $6 million in donations. One of the groups was run by Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, who promoted baseless conspiracies about the election.

While the report concluded there was no significant difference between the vote totals from Maricopa County showing Biden had won and the results from the review, some Republicans in Arizona, including House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., still pushed back on the results.

Biggs continued to falsely insist during Thursday’s hearing that “we don’t know” if Biden won the 2020 election.

Former President Donald Trump has continued to say that the election was corrupt, despite the auditor’s findings. At a rally in Georgia late last month after the release of the audit report, he still insisted that Biden lost in Arizona.

“Headlines claiming that Biden won are fake news and a very big lie,” adding that the so-called forensic audit showed that Trump had won. “They had headlines that Biden wins in Arizona when they know it’s not true. He didn’t win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona.”

Vote totals were certified across the country by bipartisan officials, and the more than 60 lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies to dispute the results of the election failed in the courtrooms, even those with Trump-appointed judges.

Two officials from Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors, both Republicans, also testified Thursday. Bill Gates and Jack Sellers both spoke out against the partisan review and did not entertain the notion that the election was stolen.

Maloney played a voice message left by former President Donald Trump’s close ally Rudy Giuliani, who spent months pursuing conspiracy theories related to election fraud in some of the nation’s battleground states.

Giuliani asked if there was a “way to resolve this so it comes out well for everyone. We are all Republicans, I think we all have the same goal.”

“Let’s see if we can get this done outside of the courts, gosh,” he said.

Gates said he believed that was an attempt to interfere with election results.

“That voicemail was left at a time we were in litigation with the state Senate overturning over the ballots and the election machines. I think he was trying to get us to settle that lawsuit, so that they could very quickly get the ballots in advance of the January 6 certification of the electoral college,” Gates said.

Neither Gates nor Sellers responded to pressures from Giuliani and other Trump allies, like one from Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward to “stop the counting.”

The so-called audit has cost taxpayers at least $450,000, according to the Arizona Republic’s review of the process’ records. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs initially said that the county would need to create a new contract for its voting machines, since they were likely compromised. That was rescinded as a part of a deal the county struck with the state Senate in late September.

Audit officials and Republicans, including Trump, have alleged a number of violations were discovered in the partisan review. The county has debunked all of their claims and created a website to address the allegations made by the Cyber Ninjas.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill.) — President Joe Biden renewed his call for private employers to require their workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19, saying “we are going to beat this pandemic” if more Americans get their shots.

“Without them, we face endless months of chaos in our hospitals, damage to our economy and anxiety in our schools and empty restaurants and much less commerce,” Biden said during a speech in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, where he toured a construction site overseen by Clayco, which is one of the Midwest’s largest construction companies and announced new vaccination requirements for its employees Thursday.

“I know these decisions aren’t easy, but you’re setting an example and a powerful example,” he said of Clayco’s new requirement.

Biden said that the U.S. is in a position to “leap forward” economically and that businesses “have more power than ever before to change the arc of this pandemic.”

“I know that vaccination requirements are tough medicine, unpopular to some, politics for others, but they’re life-saving, they’re game-changing for our country,” he said.

Biden’s remarks came just hours after the White House released a new report outlining the importance of requirements in driving up vaccination rates and helping Americans return to work.

The 26-page report says more than 185 million Americans are now fully vaccinated and that “the unprecedented pace of the president’s vaccination campaign saved over 100,000 lives and prevented 450,000 hospitalizations.”

“These requirements work,” Biden said. “More people are getting vaccinated. More lives are being saved.”

According to the White House, more than 3,500 organizations have already instituted some form of vaccine requirement, including 25% of businesses, 40% of hospitals, and colleges and universities serving 37% of all graduate and undergraduate students. They said thousands more businesses will institute requirements over the weeks ahead as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule for businesses with more than 100 workers is still being finalized.

White House COVID-19 Data Director Cyrus Shahpar also announced on Thursday that 78% of adults in the U.S. have now received at least one vaccine dose.

Biden’s visit, which was rescheduled from last week so the president could focus on infrastructure negotiations in Washington, D.C., comes nearly a month after he laid out a six-point plan to combat the pandemic, which included a vaccination requirement for federal government employees, health care workers and all businesses with more than 100 employees, which he said “wasn’t my first instinct.”

“Vaccination requirements work,” Biden said. “And there’s nothing new about them. They’ve been around for decades. We’ve been living with these requirements throughout our lives.”

The president also met with United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, who implemented a requirement for employees to be vaccinated in August and now boasts a 99% vaccination rate.

Biden’s visit also comes as the president’s overall approval rating is declining, including his handling of COVID-19. In a Quinnipiac poll among U.S. adults released Wednesday, fewer than four in 10 Americans now say they approve of Biden’s overall job performance, four points lower than Quinnipiac reported in a poll three weeks ago. Meanwhile, 50% disapprove and 48% approve of his COVID-19 response.

ABC’s Sarah Kolinovsky contributed to this report

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.