


Treasury would not only run out of cash but also run out of ways ("extraordinary measures") to get by with an empty till. But it cannot do that when the debt limit has already been reached.Įveryone in the Capitol and the White House has known for months that the day was approaching when the U.S. To meet all these obligations, the Treasury needs to renew its borrowing to fill the gap between the revenues it has been empowered to collect and the outlays that Congress and the president have ordered it to make. And all this while Treasury also sends checks to tens of millions of beneficiaries under Social Security, Medicare and other programs. Treasury is running out of cash to pay creditors whose bonds are coming due at the same time Treasury must meet the federal payroll and pay bills for all the government buys. He has been here before, and more than once. McConnell may well wish to wash his hands of this year's blood-letting over the debt limit and all it entails. McConnell said he would "continue to lend my support to the speaker," repeating what he has been saying since January: "The Senate is not a relevant player at this time."īut the important words there were, and are, the last three. His counterpart in the Senate, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, has bowed to his colleague, saying just this week that McCarthy had been "sitting at the grown-ups table for months." The zoom-in camera focus will be on the president, as always, and for the first time on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has the leading role after moving a bill to boost the debt ceiling through his chamber last month by a vote of 217-215.

debt limit and the latest round in Washington's perennial crisis over raising its self-imposed limit on its borrowing. On Tuesday, President Biden will commence a round of talks with the top leaders of the two parties in the two chambers of Congress. The city named for Washington still has a way of pressing certain distasteful responsibilities on its lead actors – even when they would rather be in a different role, or in a different drama altogether.Īnd that sets the scene that now confronts Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader for the past 16 years. Hamilton desperately wants his longtime mentor to stay in office, but Washington presses the quill pen upon him insistently as he sings "One Last Time." Late in the musical Hamilton, President George Washington asks Alexander Hamilton to "help" him write his farewell speech.
