Yellen told Reuters in an interview that the Biden budget for fiscal
2024 would contain "substantial deficit reduction over the next
decade.
"And we're going to show how we're going to accomplish that," she
said on the sidelines of a G20 finance leaders meeting. "Republicans
need to put a plan on the table, and a negotiation or discussion
about that is certainly possible, but it can't be a condition or
precondition for raising the debt ceiling."
Republicans who hold a slim majority in the House of
Representatives, have demanded that President Joe Biden agree to
spending cuts as in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.
Yellen said the United States "can't bargain over whether or not
we're going to pay our bills. It's simply a fundamental
responsibility a government has."
Yellen said that tax receipts collected around the April 15 filing
deadline could allow for some adjustments in the department's
estimate of when it would no longer be able to pay all of the
government's bills without an increase in the $31.4 trillion debt
limit.
The Treasury has not yet changed its early June estimate for that
time frame, made last month, although the Congressional Budget
Office has estimated the Treasury's' cash and extraordinary
borrowing measures could last until September.
"The tax receipts will be informative about when the likely X-date
is," she said, referring to a common Washington term for a potential
default date. "We felt comfortable and we told Congress that we
could at least get to early June."
(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)
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