The U.S. reached its debt ceiling on Thursday, setting the stage for an intense showdown in Congress and the possibility of the government defaulting on its bonds in mere months.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified lawmakers of the milestone in a letter midmorning. She had warned them last week that the deadline was imminent.
The debt ceiling—a legislative artifact that puts a cap on how much the government can borrow—currently stands at $31.4 trillion, and unless Congress raises it, the government will run out of money.
In theory, hitting the debt ceiling would lead to dire economic circumstances. All government spending would suddenly stop—think of Medicare, Social Security, and salaries for the military being cut off overnight. Perhaps even more dramatically, it might mean the government fails to pay interest on bonds already issued, which would be considered a credit event that could raise borrowing costs for years afterward. The extra interest payments could cost trillions.
In practice, none of that is imminent. The government is funded by a combination of bond sales and tax receipts. Yellen said the Treasury Department is suspending debt issuance and will start to use “extraordinary measures” to allow the government to continue paying its bills.
“I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” she said in the letter.
U.S. government bonds are traded across the world as the least-risky asset denominated in dollars, the international reserve currency. If the U.S. government is seen as untrustworthy about paying its debts, it would send shock waves throughout the global financial system.
So far, credit ratings firms aren’t sounding the alarm on U.S. government bonds, however. On Thursday, Moody’s Investors Service said it expects Congress to reach an agreement on a new debt limit to avoid a credit event, but warned of possible negative effects on financial markets.
An agreement will likely only be reached very late or in an incremental fashion, potentially contributing to flare-ups in financial market volatility,” Moody’s said in a report issued Thursday. But the firm expects a deal because of the “potentially severe consequences that a missed payment could have on financial markets and the economy.”
The debt ceiling is a quirk of the U.S. legislative system—most countries don’t have one. It creates the situation of Congress having to vote once to approve legislation requiring funding, and then having to vote again later on whether to approve the funds to carry out its wishes.
The limit was first introduced in 1917 to allow the government to sell more bonds during World War I. It was repeatedly raised without much fanfare, and in 1979, Congressman Dick Gephardt introduced a procedural rule that deemed the debt ceiling was automatically raised every time the budget was passed. That rule, however, was repealed in 1995 amid the so-called “Republican Revolution” led by Newt Gingrich, creating the opening for the Congressional debt-ceiling showdowns seen in recent years.
In 2011, the U.S. just narrowly avoided being unable to pay its bills, prompting a response from ratings firms. Standard & Poor’s downgraded its rating on U.S. debt for the first time in history, marking it one notch below the highest AAA grade. Moody’s and Fitch Ratings didn’t downgrade Treasuries, but they did lower the outlook on the debt to “negative” that year.
The U.S. might be in for a similarly intense show of brinkmanship. Republicans say they want budget cuts before lifting the ceiling. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has reportedly promised the House Republicans who held up his installment as Speaker that he wouldn’t agree to a limit increase without significant spending reductions or other fiscal reforms.
The White House continues to say it won’t negotiate. “There will be no negotiations of the debt ceiling,” Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton told reporters on Thursday. “Congress must address this without conditions.”
Dalton told reporters that McCarthy voted three times to raise the debt ceiling during the Trump administration without any spending cuts “and there’s no reason that this position should change.”
Oregon Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a tweet on Thursday that slashing Medicare and Social Security in exchange for raising the debt ceiling is “a stunt” and “a non-starter” for Democrats.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, appearing Thursday in his home state of Kentucky, said he wasn’t worried about the matter for now, according to the Associated Press.
“America must never default on its debt,” McConnell said, the AP reported. “We’ll end up in some kind of negotiation with the administration over what are the circumstances or conditions under which the debts are going to be raised.”
But Missouri Republican Rep. Jason Smith, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a tweet that even with revenue at an all-time high, “Washington can’t maintain its spending habits– running up massive deficits & adding trillions to our national debt.” He called on both sides to come together to find a solution.
Wells Fargo economists Michael Pugliese and Karl Vesely said in a note that “given the dynamics that are at play, we believe the probability of a protracted and potentially serious debt ceiling showdown is elevated compared to similar episodes in the past.”
S&P Global Ratings affirmed its ratings on the U.S. sovereign debt. “We expect that key economic policies will remain stable and largely predictable,” wrote S&P’s primary credit analyst Joydeep Mukherji in a note Thursday. “Despite many years of polarization, the executive and legislative branches of government have shown an ability to pass crucial legislation based on last-minute compromises”
One argument for having the debt ceiling is that it gives investors confidence that the government’s borrowing won’t get out of control. There’s only one real-world obstacle to a government borrowing an infinite amount of the money it can print itself—bond markets. If borrowing increases too much, investors will ultimately demand higher yields, eventually making it too expensive for the government to issue more debt.
Given that the existence of the debt ceiling comes from an arcane piece of legislation, there are a few ideas floating around for how President Joe Biden might be able to sidestep it. One is that the Treasury could use its own Constitutional powers to mint a $1 trillion coin, deposit it at the Federal Reserve, and use the cash for spending.
Or Biden could invoke another obscure law that requires the executive branch to spend money for programs Congress has legislated. Congress might object if Biden did this, but day-to-day spending would carry on while the case went through the courts.
Of course, Congress could also just legislate the debt ceiling away. But Biden last year rejected that idea as “irresponsible.”
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