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Lew noted in an
interview on National Public Radio airing on Thursday that he
notified congressional leaders last week that the federal
government would hit its legal debt limit around Nov. 5 and had
indicated in the letter "it could even be a little sooner than
that."
"So they only have a few weeks," Lew said of the
Republican-controlled Congress. "They need to act. The sooner
they act, the better."
The federal government is currently scraping just under its $18
trillion legal debt cap, with political wrangling over fiscal
policy putting Washington at risk of not being able to pay its
bills.
The Treasury came close to missing payments in 2011 and 2013
when Congress delayed increasing the borrowing limit.
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner has left open
the possibility of advancing an increase to the debt limit
before he resigns from Congress on Oct. 30.
But some conservative Republicans have said they cannot support
a debt limit increase unless certain issues are addressed, such
as a plan to sharply reduce government spending.
Lew told NPR: "We've made it clear that we are not going to let
the debt ceiling be used as a way to extract commitments that
otherwise would be unacceptable."
But he added that the Obama administration has suggested it is
open to lawmakers combining the debt limit increase with
"something else that's mutually acceptable" if that makes
passage easier.
Completing work on raising the debt limit by the end of October
"is none too early," Lew said.
"If you just think back to 2013 and 2011, getting to the day
before we can't pay our bills, the day before the government of
the United States might default for the first time in its
history, we shouldn't get even close to it."
(Reporting by Peter Cooney; Editing by Eric Beech)
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