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To: Les H who wrote (170788)	6/6/2002 11:00:54 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

O'Neill calls on US Congress to raise debt limit by June 28 at latest Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill called on Congress to raise the debt ceiling by June 28 at the latest. "It's necessary for the Congress to act. They don't have a choice," O'Neill told reporters on Capitol Hill after a meeting with lawmakers to discuss his recent trip to Africa with Republican lawmakers. O'Neill said the Congress has had sufficient time to raise the limit since he first requested that Congress raise the current 5.95 trln usd debt ceiling by $750 billion last Dec 6. "That's six months. It seems like an extraordinary period of time to do something as simple and necessary as pass the debt ceiling," O'Neill said, adding the current limit could be breached "in the next couple weeks" and "for sure by the (June) 28th." Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said he has taken a procedural step so that the Senate would be able to take up legislation to increase the debt ceiling by $450 billion sometime this month. House Republican leaders finessed the issue by including "place-holder" language in last week's spending bill - a vague reference to the "full faith and credit of the US government" which could be sharpened later into a specific debt ceiling hike. O'Neill criticized the political maneuvering over the debt limit. "It is a certain madness that causes intelligent people to spend their time debating or not debating or not acting on the question of whether we're going to raise the debt ceiling when everyone knows their no choice," O'Neill said. O'Neill refused to comment specifically on Daschle's 450 billion proposal. He said the House action was insufficient. "The debt ceiling is not something they can hold in place because they've already appropriated the money that is going to take us to the debt ceiling," he said.