WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin informed Congress on Monday that he will stop making payments into two government retirement funds now that the debt limit has gone back into effect.
In a letter to congressional leaders, Mnuchin said that he would stop making investments into a civil service retirement fund and a postal service retirement fund.
These are among the actions that Mnuchin is allowed to take to keep from exceeding the debt limit, which went back into effect on Saturday at a level of $22 trillion.
The debt limit had been suspended for a year under a 2018 budget deal. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Mnuchin likely has enough maneuvering room to avoid a catastrophic default on the national debt until around September.
The U.S. government has never missed a debt payment although budget battle between then-President Barack Obama and Republicans in 2011 pushed approval of an increase in the debt limit so close to a default that the Standard and Poor’s rating agency downgraded a portion of the country’s credit rating for the first time in history.
How about the payments to the US Treasury the Postal Service has defaulted on for at least the last 6 years?
Bottom line…..How is this going to affect us?