The United States will run out of ways to prevent the government from defaulting sometime this summer, between July and September, the Congressional Budget Office projected Wednesday.
That deadline is later than the one that has been given by the Treasury Department, which is for June. The U.S. hit its debt ceiling last month, and the Treasury Department began “extraordinary measures” to prevent default. The measures essentially amount to shifting money around government accounts in order to pay incoming bills without issuing new debt.
“The projected exhaustion date is uncertain because the timing and amount of revenue collections and outlays over the intervening months could differ from our projections. In particular, income tax receipts in April could be more or less than we estimate,” the CBO noted.