Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned Congress on Thursday that it must raise the debt ceiling by Nov. 3 in order to guarantee that the government will be able to avoid a default on the debt.
Lew’s letter makes the debt ceiling a more urgent matter than it already was for Congress. Previously, Lew had warned that he would exhaust the “extraordinary measures” he’s using to make payments under the $18.1 trillion debt limit on Nov. 5. Now, he warned, he expects to be left with no resources except for $30 billion in cash after Nov. 3, less than three weeks away.
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Lew’s message will increase the pressure on outgoing House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to raise the debt ceiling before his planned retirement at the end of October. Republicans have yet to select a new speaker after Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., bowed out of the race, which means Republicans may be hamstrung in dealing with the debt ceiling until they find a new leader.
Complicating it further, many conservative members of the House won’t want to raise the debt ceiling unless it’s part of a deal to cut spending further.
Lew has been managing government accounts to pay incoming bills without raising the debt ceiling since March, when a previous suspension of the debt ceiling ended.
Once all the tools for managing the debt to keep it below the ceiling are exhausted, he will only have cash on hand and incoming revenues to pay for the government’s bills.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated Wednesday that the Treasury would face the possibility of missing a payment on the debt or on another obligation “sometime during the first half of November.”
