WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress and the Biden administration have until at least June 5 to broker and enact a debt limit bill under new estimates from the Treasury Department, giving negotiators a few more days before the country would default.
“Based on the most recent available data, we now estimate that Treasury will have insufficient resources to satisfy the government’s obligations if Congress has not raised or suspended the debt limit by June 5,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote in a letter released Friday afternoon.
Yellen wrote that political leaders 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 consumer confidence, raise short-term borrowing costs for taxpayers, and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States.”
“In fact, we have already seen Treasury’s borrowing costs increase substantially for securities maturing in early June,” Yellen added. “If Congress fails to increase the debt limit, it would cause severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position, and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests.”
Negotiations over the country’s debt limit and government spending continued behind closed doors Friday, though the broad parameters of an agreement did begin to emerge.
U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, told reporters in the Capitol building Friday morning that the two sides would continue working towards a bipartisan agreement on the open items.
This article originally appeared in florida phoenix