The White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have not made any gains on settling the impasse on the budget and debt ceiling.
The debt limit—commonly called the debt ceiling—is the maximum amount of debt that the Department of the Treasury can issue to the public or to other federal agencies.
This amount is set by law and has been increased or suspended over the years to allow for the additional borrowing needed to finance the government’s operations, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
On December 16, 2021, lawmakers raised the debt limit by $2.5 trillion to a total of $31.4 trillion.1 On January 19, 2023, that limit was reached, and the Treasury announced a “debt issuance suspension period” during which, under current law, it can take well-established “extraordinary measures” to borrow additional funds without breaching the debt ceiling.
Let’s be clear – fights over increasing the nation’s borrowing authority have been contentious in Congress, yet they follow a familiar pattern.
Time and again, lawmakers always seem to find a way to bring the country back from the edge of the “fiscal destruction cliff” before the stock market begins to panic and we end up with a dangerous default on the country’s debt.
Added to the pressure revolving around the U.S. debt ceiling, McCarthy has pressed President Joe Biden to start more robust negotiations over raising the nation’s borrowing limit ahead of the Congressional Budget Act’s April 15 deadline, ABC News is reporting.
President Biden released his budget plan for Fiscal Year 2024 on March 9th. According to the House Budget Committee, Committees submit views and estimates to Budget Committees. (Frequently, the House Budget Committee sets its own date based on Legislative Calendar)
By April 15, Congress should have completed action on a concurrent resolution on the budget. However, Congress left Washington on Thursday with no proposal in sight and isn’t due to return until the week of April 17.
McCarthy has not detailed a timeline for when the budget will be released, and Texas Rep. Jodey Arrington, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, told the Wall Street Journal that it could be months before the party produces a budget.
It seems more than likely that we will all be holding our breath again come the first of October when the federal government will be facing a shutdown because we don’t have a budget.
