Because 19.9 Trillion just isn’t enough.

 A funny thing happened While we were sleeping the other night. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin urged Congress to raise the debt limit as soon as possible to avoid a potential federal government default. Former Goldman-Sachs executive (a.k.a. drained swamp monster) and freshly minted Treasury Secretary wrote Paul Ryan a letter last Wednesday asking permission to once again use our grand children’s credit card.

“I respectfully urge Congress to protect the full faith and credit of the United States by acting to increase the statutory debt limit as soon as possible,” Mnuchin said in a letter sent to Republican and Democratic leaders in both chambers of Congress.

Mnuchin warned that beginning Thursday, the federal government’s outstanding debt was at the statutory limit. It means the Treasury has no room to borrow under standard operating procedures starting yesterday.

In order to temporarily prevent the government from defaulting on its obligations, the Treasury begun using “extraordinary measures” to continue to finance the government’s activities, said Mnuchin. The editors at thestoreyteller.online feel the most responsible “extraordinary measure” would be to cut the damn thing up. When you’re in a hole, you need to stop digging.

These extraordinary measures could help the Treasury have sufficient cash to make essential payments “until sometime in the fall of this year” without an increase in the debt limit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

At that time, the Treasury will have exhausted extraordinary measures and would need to borrow more money to avoid a government debt default.

The debt limit is the maximum amount of debt that the Treasury can issue to the public and to the other federal agencies. The amount of outstanding debt subject to limit has now risen to about 19.9 trillion U.S. dollars. And as we all know 19.9 is psycologically so much better than say, 20. Or 30.

Are we feeling Great yet?