Hatch asks CBO to confirm Treasury’s debt-ceiling estimates

A top Senate Republican is asking the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to verify the Treasury Department’s Nov. 3 debt-ceiling deadline.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Friday sent a letter to CBO Director Keith Hall requesting the agency confirm the date and how much cash the federal government will have on hand in early November.

{mosads}Hatch wrote that he is going to the CBO because Treasury won’t provide daily updates to Congress on its projections of daily cash as the nation moves precariously close to hitting the debt limit.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew recently moved up the deadline by two days to Nov. 3 and said the government will have only $30 billion on hand at that time to pay the nation’s bills. 

Congress has yet to produce a plan to raise the $18.1 trillion debt ceiling.

The White House on Friday said that President Obama will veto any bill that includes spending cuts. 

Obama and congressional Democrats want a “clean” debt-ceiling increase. It was looking more likely this week that Republicans were resigned to move forward on that path and shift their fiscal demands to an expected budget fight in December.

On Oct. 14, the CBO updated its debt-ceiling projections, which aligned closely with Treasury’s estimate.

“The Treasury will begin running a very low cash balance in early November and the extraordinary measures will be exhausted and the cash balance entirely depleted sometime during the first half of November,” Hall said in the CBO report.

“At such time, the government would be unable to fully pay its obligations, a development that would lead to delays of payments for government activities, a default on the government’s debt obligations, or both.”

The CBO previously projected a deadline between mid-November and early December. The agency revised the date primarily because the Treasury’s cash balance at the beginning of October was smaller than expected.