is if Yellen comes out again in the next week to emphasize what can and cannot be done, to stave off a default.
Yellen warns US may hit debt limit in October
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER and ALAN FRAM September 8, 2021
WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is warning Congress that she will run out of maneuvering room to prevent the U.S. from broaching the government’s borrowing limit in October. In a letter to congressional leaders Wednesday, Yellen said that she still could not provide a specific date for when she will be unable to keep the government funded, absent action by Congress to raise the debt limit. “Based on our best and most recent information, the most likely outcome is that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted during the month of October,” Yellen wrote. Yellen said recent measures to address the debt limit had enjoyed “broad bipartisan support,” But Republicans have said they will oppose an effort by Democrats to deal with the debt limit by attaching a provision to an emergency budget bill that Congress will need to pass before the start of the budget year on Oct. 1.
That legislation is needed to avoid a government shutdown. Instead, some Republicans have said Democrats should attach a debt limit increase to the $3.5 trillion infrastructure plan that Democrats are hoping to pass without Republican votes, using a process known as “budget reconciliation.”
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that Democrats will not be putting the debt limit increase in the reconciliation measure. She said Democrats have several “options” for raising the debt ceiling but she did not specify for that they were. She said Democrats supported lifting the borrowing limit under Trump “because it’s the responsible thing to do. I would hope that the Republicans would act in a similarly responsible way.”
(snip)
While Republicans in Congress have often used the debt limit debate to extract budget concessions from Democratic presidents, lawmakers have never failed to raise the debt limit or suspend it to allow the government to keep borrowing. However, in 2011, a budget battle between the Obama administration and Republicans dragged on for so long that the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded a portion of Treasury debt from its AAA rating for the first time in history.
“We have learned from past debt limit impasses that waiting until the last minute to suspend or increase the debt limit can cause serious harm to business and and consumer confidence, raise short-term borrowing costs for taxpayers and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States,” Yellen said. “A delay that calls into question the federal government’s ability to meet all of its obligations would likely cause irreparable damage to the U.S. economy and global financial markets,” she said. “I respectfully urge Congress to protect the full faith and credit of the United States by acting as soon as possible.”
https://apnews.com/article/business-janet-yellen-ac00e6452c48fba9a2bd21d9f633e961
The bolded part is what is intriguing.
As a possibility, there are 3 different types of reconciliation that can be used each fiscal year and they can each be used as "standalone" measures OR can be used in a combo of any 2 "types" or using all 3 "types". So it's possible that given the debt ceiling one is one of those "types", it could be a "standalone" OR be included in combo with a
different type - i.e., a "revenue" one (taxes), since she is ruling it out a combo of it with the "spending" one (for the Infrastructure).
Of course another possibility is the carve-out mentioned for the filibuster.
= new reply since forum marked as read
