The US Treasury had just $67 billion of extraordinary measures left to help keep the government’s bills paid as of May 24, the department said in a statement Friday.
(Bloomberg) — The US Treasury had just $67 billion of extraordinary measures left to help keep the government’s bills paid as of May 24, the department said in a statement Friday.
That’s out of a total of $335 billion of authorized measures that were available to keep the US government from running out of borrowing room under the statutory debt limit and is down from around $92 billion on May 17.
The measures are a collection of various accounting gimmicks that enable the administration to keep selling debt even though it has run up against the $31.4 trillion borrowing ceiling imposed by Congress.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that the government could run short of funds as soon as early June. But there have been signs of progress toward a deal between Republicans and Democrats in Washington, although no agreement just yet.
The Treasury’s cash balance fell to $38.8 billion as of Thursday, according to data published Friday, the lowest since 2017. That’s down from from $49.5 billion a day earlier and $140 billion on May 12. The Treasury’s bank account has been under downward pressure recently because of measures being taken to avoid breaching the $31.4 trillion debt cap.
The premium investors demand to hold US paper that’s most at risk of default if Congress and the White House fail to strike a deal continued to retreat Friday, with yields sliding below 6%.
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