Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Tuesday that she’s prepared to inform Congress she will immediately deploy “extraordinary measures” to avoid violating the government debt limit as lawmakers hurtle toward the July debt deadline.
During an interview with Reuters, Yellen said the Treasury is poised to end July with a cash balance of roughly $450 billion, well below the previous week’s level of $718 billion.
“If Congress doesn’t act, I will send a letter indicating my intention to invoke (extraordinary measures),” Yellen said. “I’ll provide more details about how long I think emergency powers would last. There’s a lot of uncertainty around it and I think we have to be careful.”
The debt ceiling, which is currently around $22 trillion, is the legal limit on the total amount of debt that the federal government can accrue; according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget it applies to both the $16.2 trillion held by the public, and the $5.9 trillion owed by the government.
In 2019, former President Donald Trump suspended the nation’s borrowing limit for two years, but that suspension is poised to expire on July 31, and Democrats seemingly do not have a plan yet to raise the limit or suspend it again.
“We’re considering all options,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently told Bloomberg News recently.
