The United States should reach the debt limit this summer absent from the action of the congress
The Congressional Budget Office warned on Wednesday that the government could lack money to pay its bills in August or September if the legislators fail to resolve the debt limit.
“The government’s ability to borrow using extraordinary measures will probably be exhausted in August or September 2025”, the non -partisan report of CBO foreseen.
The CBO added that a precise X -projected date is not clear because “the moment and the amount of income collections and expenses during the intermediate months could differ from CBO projections”. The estimated projection provides the congress an approximate calendar to cope with the limit of the debt to avoid a defect.
“If the government’s loan needs are significantly higher than that of CBO projects, the resources of the Treasury could be exhausted in late May or June, before the tax payments planned in mid-June were received or before additional additional measures become available on June 30,” he said in the report.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent takes care of a Club of New York event in New York in New York, March 6, 2025.
Jeenah Moon / Reuters
If legislators do not raise or suspend the debt limit before all extraordinary measures are exhausted, the government could be lacking on its debt – something that has only occurred in the history of the United States, but never with regard to the statutory debt limit.
“The Treasury has already reached the current debt limit of 36.1 billions of dollars, it therefore has no room to borrow under its standard operational procedures”, according to the CBO report.
The secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, told Congress leaders that his department would provide an estimate of the duration of extraordinary measures during the first half of May – after the tax season.
“I respectfully exhort the Congress to act quickly to protect full faith and the credit of the United States,” said Bessent in a letter of March 14 at the Congress.
The question has been on the Congress’s task list since last winter, when the secretary of the Treasure of the time, Janet Yellen, warned that the debt limit would be reached around the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who was on January 20.
While Trump called on the Republicans in the House and the Senate to abolish the debt limit, the members of the Congress should include a provision in their set of budgetary reconciliation to suspend the debt limit until the end of the Trump administration, although a plan is not finalized, in particular to compensate for any increase with expense reductions and reforms.
