U.S. Nears Debt Ceiling, Begins Extraordinary Measures to Avoid Default

The Treasury Department began taking special measures to keep paying the government’s bills on Thursday as the U.S. bumped up against its borrowing limit, kicking off a potentially lengthy and difficult debate in Congress over raising the debt ceiling. 

With the federal government constrained by the roughly $31.4 trillion debt limit, the Treasury Department began deploying so-called extraordinary measures. Those accounting maneuvers, which include suspending investments for certain government accounts, will allow the Treasury to keep paying obligations to bondholders, Social Security recipients and others until at least early June, the department said last week.  

Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal

Feature image, MeanieHyaena, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.