Debt ceiling, government shutdown battles simmer in summer recess

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

The Washington dance of flirting with fiscal catastrophe intensified this week, as the Obama administration warned House Republicans that a deal on increasing the federal debt limit may have to come sooner than expected.

 

The warning came in a letter from Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to House Speaker John Boehner, who along with other members of Congress is still on summer recess and not expected to return until early September. That leaves little time to deal with two looming deadlines that have not yet been addressed.

 

In order to first prevent a partial government shutdown, Congress and the Obama administration must agree on at least a temporary spending deal.

 

Such a bill is typically reached without too much partisan wrangling. But this year’s effort is being complicated by Republicans saying any measure should include the steep cuts known as sequester that started this spring, and by some Democrats insisting they be removed. Plus a small-but-vocal group of Tea Party-backed Republicans is stirring the pot by trying to insist that funding for the president’s health care law, whose official signup date also is Oct. 1, be stripped from any budget bill.

 

Lew, in his letter on Monday, said the debt-ceiling deadline will follow close behind. According to Lew, the Treasury Department will run out of so-called "extraordinary measures" -- tactics to avoid bumping up against the debt ceiling -- in the middle of October, risking a default unless Congress raises the cap.

 

“Extending borrowing authority does not increase government spending; it simply allows the Treasury to pay for expenditures Congress has previously approved,” Lew told Boehner, R-Ohio. “Protecting the … credit of the United States is the responsibility of the Congress because only Congress can extend the nation’s borrowing authority.”

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Passing the buck.