Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew says he will start using emergency measures after Feb. 7 to avoid a first-ever default on the national debt. He says he expects to exhaust those measures quickly.
Lew said in a speech Monday that he expected to run out of maneuvering room by the end of this month. Congress suspended the debt limit last October as part of a deal to re-open the government after a partial shutdown. But the suspension ends on Friday.
After that time, Lew can employ various measures to keep the government operating without breaching the debt limit.
But he said because of the time of the year, those measures will probably only last until Feb. 28. He said Congress should act without delay to increase the debt ceiling.
(AP)
3 Responses
“It’s déjà vu all over again”
i’m sorry to tell you that I AM PREPARED FOR THE USA TO COLLAPSE
But to collapse on a different account: we have all been living in denial & not facing reality. one of the reasons being
the first time I wrote the message below was along time ago, when the economy started to collapse due to:
Why is the economy so bad today? Why is the whole world going down? For the past thousands of years there was always Avoda zara in the world-from the molech to the baal to the asheira tree etc…-todays avoda zara is MONEY, we are a servant to money, we serve money, we bow down to money, we let money talk & rule us. Thus we leave Hashem no choice but to take it away from us Rachmana L’tzlan. But you can still save yourself from going down. if a person can use his money the right way & remember that it all comes from Hashem & it was just loaned to him (even though he worked for it), then he is the perfect person to continue holding Hashem’s money.
i’m watching as the situation & economy gets worse & worse. And the craziest part about it is, that it doesn’t surprise me or shock me this entire country is about to collapse slowly but surely. The world is run by Hashem & nobody else (not obama or the gedolim etc…)
you can save yourself now from losing everything, by stopping on depending on the government & depend on Hashem alone & then you will not lack anything & actually have a smooth & happy life.
be prepared for all your rights & freedoms to be taken away slowly but surely-not in one shot-& soon WE will not be able to live in the USA as frum yidden. all our rights & freedoms are being taken from us one at a time & the USA is about to become what used to be communist russia. pack your bags NOW & head for Eretz Yisroel, while the pressure is not so hard & before america is attacked by iran. for then it will be too late & everyone will be leaving in poverty, wishing they had left-now-when they were told.
I wish everyone Hatzlacha to start turning STRAIGHT to Hashem for help in all situations (from parnassa to refuah etc….) i.e. no middlemen/Rabbonim etc… & depend on nothing other then Hashem. then you will be helped by Hashem as it says in tehillim (chapter 34) for one that seeks Hashems help lacks nothing.
I now add the message below that is a more current message:
This country is just going to collapse-step by step-just like greece & other countries, and i’m watching it happen as things go from worse to horrific R”L. ITS JUST A MATTER OF TIME before all our rights & freedoms will be taken away from us (rather religious laws or freedom etc…) soon the USA will be a communist country just like China. soon the USA will be shut for good as they go more into dept & its dept keeps growing.
That’s right, all our rights & freedoms will be taken away one by one, from metziza b’peh to sugary drinks etc… & soon we will not be able to live as free yidden R”L.
there is only one way to save yourself now, GO TO ERETZ YISROEL & save yourself before its too late, there are many programs to assist anyone that makes aliya,-from the minute you get off the plane with nefesh b’nefesh all the way down to housing & wic etc…-sorry but if you think i’m breslev or a Zionist your making a big mistake. trust me for your sake & save yourself before its too late, many people before WWII stayed in Germany for many reasons (values or family or too comfortable there etc…) & look what happened cause they didn’t listen to the gedolim who said flee to Israel or the USA.
May we all be in Yerushalyim ASAP with mashiach
Obama’s 2006 speech on the debt limit
“Mr. President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem. The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills.”
Here, Obama is sounding a bit Tea Partyish.
“It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies. Over the past five years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is ‘‘trillion’’ with a ‘‘T.’’ That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers.”
Obama’s language is remarkably similar to charges made by the Mitt Romney campaign against Obama during the 2012 election, though Romney mostly focused on the debt held by China. (Japan was ignored.) When Obama took office in the midst of the Great Recession, the total national debt was $10.6 trillion; it is now $16.4 trillion.
“And over the next five years, between now and 2011, the president’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion.”
It actually increased $5 trillion by the start of fiscal 2011.
“Numbers that large are sometimes hard to understand. Some people may wonder why they matter. Here is why: This year, the federal government will spend $220 billion on interest. That is more money to pay interest on our national debt than we’ll spend on Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
“That is more money to pay interest on our debt this year than we will spend on education, homeland security, transportation and veterans benefits combined. It is more money in one year than we are likely to spend to rebuild the devastated gulf coast in a way that honors the best of America. And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the federal budget.”
Despite the increase in the debt the past seven years, interest costs actually have dropped, to about $200 billion a year, because interest rates have fallen so much during the economic slowdown. But if interest rates go up again, interest expense will soar.
“This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and states of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health-care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on.
“Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities. Instead, interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans — a debt tax that Washington doesn’t want to talk about. If Washington were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we would see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning to responsible fiscal policies.”
“But we are not doing that. Despite repeated efforts by Senators Conrad and Feingold, the Senate continues to reject a return to the commonsense pay-go rules that used to apply. Previously, pay-go rules applied both to increases in mandatory spending and to tax cuts. The Senate had to abide by the commonsense budgeting principle of balancing expenses and revenues.
“Unfortunately, the principle was abandoned, and now the demands of budget discipline apply only to spending. As a result, tax breaks have not been paid for by reductions in Federal spending, and thus the only way to pay for them has been to increase our deficit to historically high levels and borrow more and more money. Now we have to pay for those tax breaks plus the cost of borrowing for them. Instead of reducing the deficit, as some people claimed, the fiscal policies of this administration and its allies in Congress will add more than $600 million in debt for each of the next five years. That is why I will once again co-sponsor the pay-go amendment and continue to hope that my colleagues will return to a smart rule that has worked in the past and can work again.”