(Archived Content)
Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, in response to speculation that June 28 is not the deadline for hitting the statutory debt ceiling, today said:
Since May 16 th we have had to engage in a series of extraordinary accounting measures to avoid breaching the statutory debt ceiling.
Using all of the accounting devices that I described to Congress in my letter of May 14 th, we project that we can continue to avoid breaching the debt ceiling until the end of June. At that time we will be required to credit an interest payment of approximately $67 billion to various federal trust funds, including Social Security. We are also scheduled to make $54 billion in payments in the first few days of July, including approximately $30 billion of payments to Social Security beneficiaries and other trust fund beneficiaries.
It is important that Congress act on a bipartisan basis to increase the statutory debt ceiling before the end of June. It’s time to put politics aside and do the right thing for the country.