CBO: Debt limit must be raised in next 30 days
Lawmakers must raise the debt limit in the next 30 days, the Congressional Budget Office warned Wednesday.
The nonpartisan agency said the Treasury Department will run out of the accounting maneuvers as well as the cash reserve it’s used to stave off default “sometime during the first half of November.”
“At such time, the government would be unable to fully pay its obligations, a development that would lead to delays of payments for government activities, a default on the government’s debt obligations, or both,” the agency said today in a report to Congress.
That generally tracks with the Treasury Department’s own warnings. Secretary Jack Lew has said lawmakers must act by Nov. 5. House Speaker John Boehner hopes to move legislation lifting the legal cap on government borrowing before he departs, which could be by the end of this month. The government hit the debt limit in March, and since then, Treasury has been using a stable of accounting tricks to avoid breaching the cap.
CBO, which had previously said lawmakers would have to act by mid-November to early December, said it revised its forecast because of unanticipated variations in the government’s cash flow.