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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner addresses at a press conference at the conclusion of a G20 finance ministers’ meeting in Paris, France on February 19, 2011. (Photo: U.S. Treasury Department
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By Terence P. Jeffrey
(CNSNews.com) - As of the close of business yesterday, the U.S. Treasury was just $13.86 billion short of hitting the legal debt limit of $14,294,000,000,000.00, according to the Daily Treasury Statement released at 4:00 pm today.
In the first two business days of May, Treasury increased the debt by $44.2 billion.
The amount the Treasury borrows fluctuates from day to day and month to month, but in the first 215 days of fiscal year 2011—which began on Oct. 1, 2010—the Treasury has increased the national debt subject to the $14.294-trillion limit by a total of $769.3 billion. That equals an average of $3.58 billion in federal borrowing per day.
At that pace, the Treasury would exhaust its remaining $13.86 billion in borrowing authority and exceed the legal debt limit in less than four days.
Over the course of April, the Treasury managed to sharply curtail its borrowing—increasing the national debt subject to the legal limit by only $18.076 billion during the month.
In a letter sent to House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio) on Monday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that the Treasury Department would start taking “extraordinary measures” to evade the debt limit this week. On Friday, Geithner said, Treasury will stop selling State and Local Government Series Treasury securities, a special type of bond the federal government sells to state and local governments.
However, according to the latest Daily Treasury Statement, the Treasury has redeemed $68.949 billion worth of these bonds this year while selling only $52.896 billion in new ones--meaning that on net the Treasury has been able to reduce the debt by $16.053 billion this year thanks to reduced demand for these bonds from state and local governments.
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