Warning on Hitting Debt Ceiling of $6.4 Trillion
By CARL HULSE
February 6, 2003
nytimes.com
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 — The Treasury Department warned today that the government would hit its $6.4 trillion debt ceiling around Feb. 20, and it urged Congress to increase the authority to borrow.
The request was made as deficit projections have continued to increase. The move is likely to set off a battle, with Democrats' seizing the opportunity to accuse President Bush and his party of flawed fiscal policy.
Congress is still grappling with fiscal issues from last year. The House passed another stopgap spending measure tonight as senior lawmakers said negotiations were progressing on a huge spending bill that would clean up the unfinished business.
The new bill, which faces a Senate vote, will keep agencies running through Feb. 20.
Members of the Appropriations Committees in the House and Senate said they hoped to wrap up by that date a $391 billion measure that would finally give most agencies a fixed revenue stream for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. Military spending bills were the only such measures to pass last year.
"We are closing in on this," Representative C. W. Bill Young, the Florida Republican who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said as the House voted tonight.
Lawmakers said they were narrowing differences over Medicare payments, farm aid, education and other issues. They said they hoped to keep as low as possible an across-the-board spending cut instituted by the Senate to cover extra initiatives.
Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that if Congress could not complete the overall spending bill by next week, it should just pass a measure financing agencies at the 2002 level through the rest of the year.
"Finish it now or forget it," Mr. Stevens said.
Such an approach would pose a hardship to agencies that are anticipating increases but would appeal to fiscal conservatives who want to hold down spending.
Mr. Young predicted that lawmakers were not going to be happy with the final product.
"I don't think any of us is going to like it," he said.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |
