The Treasury Department said Thursday it would reach the debt limit a bit earlier than was expected by many on Capitol Hill.
I wondered why the debt clock was stopped for so long.
Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew told Congress in a new letter that thanks in part to lower-than-expected quarterly tax receipts, the extraordinary measures to forestall breaching the debt limit, combined with the new revenues, will run their course just a week after the resignation of Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, takes effect.
That makes it all the more likely the debt limit will need to be addressed before his departure.
How...convenient.
"Based on this new information, we now estimate that Treasury is likely to exhaust its extraordinary measures on or about Thursday, November 5," Lew wrote in a letter to Boehner. "At that point, we could be left to fund the government with only the cash we have on hand, which we currently forecast to be below $30 billion. This amount would be far short of net expenditures on certain days, which can be as high as $60 billion."
Lew said the date could still fluctuate somewhat from Nov. 5, but the letter makes clear that the situation is more urgent than anticipated by lawmakers and staffers who expected to be able to bundle a debt limit increase with an early-December spending package.
"Without sufficient cash, it would be impossible for the United States of America to meet all of its obligations for the first time in our history," Lew wrote.
Yeah... because not giving cash to Pakistan and other countries and people that hate America is sooo awful.