Congress Passes Temporary Debt Limit Suspension
The Senate on Thursday sent President Obama legislation suspending the government’s statutory borrowing limit until May, accepting a House Republican demand that Senate Democrats produce a budget plan this spring in exchange for a debt limit reprieve that included no spending cuts.
The 64-to-34 vote ended for now a showdown that had threatened the full faith and credit of the United States government. The Treasury Department has been shuffling federal accounts for a month to make sure it could pay interest to its creditors even after the government officially breached its borrowing limit. By mid-February, the Obama administration warned, the Treasury would have exhausted such “extraordinary measures” and would have been forced to default for the first time.
Source: New York Times. Read full article. (link)
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.