Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew expects that the Treasury will exhaust its abilities to meet the federal government’s obligations without breaching the debt ceiling in mid-October. Previously, analysts had projected that the Treasury would not run out of room under the debt limit until as late as mid-November.

In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner Monday, Lew wrote that based on the latest estimates, the Treasury’s abilities to maneuver under the debt ceiling “are projected to be exhausted in the middle of October” and warned that “Congress must act before the middle of October” to avoid the “dire consequences” of a debt default.