Republicans raised the debt limit by $5 trillion last year. Now they are already thinking about how to head off another dive over the fiscal cliff on President Donald Trump’s watch.
Independent forecasters predict the U.S. will reach the “X-date” — the ultimate deadline for preventing a U.S. debt default — sometime between next summer and early 2028, just as presidential primaries start kicking into gear.
To head off high-stakes negotiations with Democrats, White House officials have privately floated raising the nation’s $41.1 trillion borrowing limit in the party-line spending package many Republicans want to enact before the November midterm elections, according to two people granted anonymity to disclose private conversations.
The move could save Trump much angst if Republicans lose control of either chamber in the upcoming election, since any Democratic majority would demand concessions in a bipartisan negotiation to prevent an unprecedented default on the national debt, which currently sits at nearly $39.7 trillion.
“$40 trillion in debt, seems to me, should get our attention,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Wednesday morning, noting that reducing the deficit used to be a “primary reason” Republicans used the reconciliation process to skirt the Senate filibuster. “But we seem to be a little distracted by other issues at the moment.”
Thune said this week that the debt ceiling is “something that a lot of people are looking to address,” noting that Republicans could increase the borrowing limit between the lame-duck session after the November election but before the new Congress is seated.
“There’s always a possibility, obviously, post-November to do something,” Thune said, adding that Republicans could “conceivably” pass another party-line package at that time.
The federal government is set to reach the borrowing limit Congress set in last year’s GOP megabill sometime in the first half of next year. But the Treasury Department would be able to employ special accounting maneuvers that would let the federal government keep paying its obligations for at least a few more months.
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