Explainer: How bad is the debt limit problem?
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government on Thursday ran up against its legal borrowing capacity of $31.381 trillion, and the Treasury Department began implementing"extraordinary measures” to avoid a default.But — take a breath — the phrase technically refers to a bunch of accounting workarounds. Yes, accounting.
What could be worrisome is not the existence of “extraordinary measures,” but what happens if they are exhausted this summer without a deal in place. Economists have warned that could lead to a global financial crisis. What happens if these “extraordinary measures” are exhausted without a debt limit deal is unknown. A prolonged default could be devastating, with crashing markets and panic-driven layoffs if confidence evaporated in a cornerstone of the global economy, the U.S. Treasury note.No dispute there. Congress has given the Treasury the authority to do so.
Since then, a tool created to make it easier for the government to function has become a source of dysfunction, stoking partisan warfare and creating economic risk as the debt has increased in size over the past 20 years.It looks alarming -- and it’s unclear how Biden, McCarthy and the Democratic Senate will find common ground.
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