The total amount of US debt broke the record! Will the government face a "shutdown"?
According to the data released by the US Treasury Department, the total amount of US treasury bond bonds exceeded 33 trillion US dollars on September 18 local time. The New York Times said that the total amount of treasury bond has reached a new high, and the financial prospects of the US government are worrying.
Currently, the two parties in Congress are engaged in a heated debate over the funding bill for the fiscal year 2024. Due to significant differences in whether to cut spending, the two parties have only approved one of the 12 annual spending bills that provide funding for the government.
The fiscal year of the United States starts from October 1st and ends on September 30th of the following year. If Congress fails to pass long-term appropriations or short-term spending bills before September 30, 2023, the last day of the fiscal year, the government will face a shutdown crisis, with less than 10 working days left.
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, McCarthy: We will handle this issue rationally, responsibly, and properly. We hope to provide funding to the government, but we need to control wasteful spending.
According to calculations from the Congressional Budget Office, the US economy suffered a permanent loss of $3 billion during the longest government shutdown in history in 2019. US Commerce Secretary Raymond recently stated that the business community is very concerned that a shutdown by the US government on October 1st will pose significant challenges to the US economy. Goldman Sachs pointed out that for every week of a comprehensive "shutdown" by the US government, economic growth will directly decline by about 0.15 percentage points.
Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro: I do hope to avoid the government shutting down. When Republicans shut down the government in 2013, millions of Americans paid a high price.