By AZ Mirror
WASHINGTON — When Republicans won unified control of government during the November elections, they also won the responsibility to address the country’s debt limit after the current suspension expires on Jan. 1.
Lawmakers will have a few months of wiggle room thanks to accounting maneuvers to broker a deal before the country would default for the first time in history — which most economists believe would kick-start a global financial crisis.
How long the Treasury Department will be able to use what’s known as extraordinary measures to give Congress more time to find agreement will lead to a high-stakes guessing game on Capitol Hill.
The debate will also likely flare tensions between centrist and far-right Republicans the closer the country gets to the real deadline sometime later in the year.
“That is always a tortured path,” West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said during a brief interview. “A lot of people that are here probably never voted for a debt limit increase, so I think it’s probably going to be a negotiated settlement with some, maybe constraints on spending and other things that would go along with that.”
