As the White House negotiates a debt ceiling deal with House of Representatives GOP Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen continues to beat the drum on rapidly depleting federal treasury cash reserves.
"There will be some obligations we will be unable to pay," Yellen noted at a Wall Street Journal forum on May 24. Citing the impossibility of making prioritized federal payments to Social Security recipients, federal workers, and U.S. veterans, among other groups, Yellen said, "We simply have to raise the debt ceiling.”
DON'T MISS: Yellen Sends a Chilly Message to U.S. Banks
On May 21, Yellen confirmed June 1 as the deadline day to raise the federal debt ceiling.
“I indicated in my last letter to Congress that we expect to be unable to pay all of our bills in early June and possibly as soon as June 1. And I will continue to update Congress, but I certainly haven’t changed my assessment. So I think that that’s a hard deadline,” Yellen said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Yellen doubled down on the issue in a May 22 letter to McCarthy, noting it’s “highly likely” the U.S. government would run out of cash by June 1, a scenario that would inflict “severe hardship” to U.S households.
Not everyone is buying the hard June 1 deadline.
“The June 1st date was probably the earliest possible date,” Pennsylvania GOP House Representative Brian Fitzpatrick told CBS’ Face The Nation on May 21. “We do have enough cash flow to pay the interest on our debt.”
“We’re going start to see the state tax revenues come in the second week of June, so I think we’re OK on that,” he added.
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