The U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday rejected a debt ceiling increase request from U.S. President Barack Obama in a symbolic vote, fresh evidence of contentious partisan wrangling in the presidential election year.

Wednesday's 239-176 vote in the Republican-led lower chamber was more symbolic than a real attempt to curb the increase in the federal government's debt limit, as U.S. President Barack Obama had the power to veto the Congress decision on the debt ceiling increase according to a bipartisan deal inked last summer.

Obama on Jan. 12 requested Congress to raise the federal government's borrowing limit by 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars, as the federal government was facing mounting budgetary pressure, the third and final step of debt ceiling increase for the bipartisan deal.

After months of partisan bickering, Republicans and Democrats last summer agreed to increase the federal government's borrowing limit by 2.1 trillion dollars from about 14.3 trillion dollars in three steps. The borrowing limit of U.S. federal government was raised in August and September 2011 by 400 billion dollars and 500 billion dollars, respectively.

"Today the Congress is engaging in an act of futility. Despite the rhetoric on both sides, no one in Washington is truly interested in stopping the rising national debt," Congressman Ron Paul, a Republican presidential contender, said Wednesday in a statement.

"If Congress were truly serious about stopping spending, it would have refused to raise the debt ceiling last summer. Instead, we were presented with a horrendous piece of legislation which gave the President his multi-trillion dollar debt limit increase with an incredibly high hurdle to stop the increase," Paul added.

U.S. Treasury figures showed that the total budget deficit of the federal government in first three months of the 2012 budget year ending December 2011 reached 321.7 billion dollars, about 107 billion dollars per month. The new borrowing capacity in the amount of 1.2 trillion dollars could fund the federal government to the end of the presidential election.