Congress has over two weeks to raise the debt ceiling, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns

published 28 September 2021

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has long said her department would have to end "its extraordinary measures" if Congress didn't raise the debt ceiling at some point in October. Now, she has a specific date.

The day of reckoning looks like it'll be Oct. 18. "At that point, we expect Treasury would be left with very limited resources that would be deplete quickly," Yellen wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday. "It is uncertain whether we could continue to meet all the nation's commitments after that date."

So, after Senate Republicans blocked a government funding resolution because it included a debt ceiling lift on Tuesday, Yellen's warning suggests that Democrats have more than two weeks to go it alone (which the GOP prefers). That said, the treasury secretary thinks waiting even that long could be risky since things could change at any given moment. "It is important to remember that estimates regarding how long our extraordinary measures and cash may last can unpredictably shift forward or backward," Yellen said. Read the full letter below.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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