US debt ceiling to be frozen for two years

The US authorities have reached an agreement on the ceiling of the national debt: the government will be required to comply with new restrictions on budget spending, subject to the actual abolition of the mechanism. This follows from an agreement that was drafted by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The document was published on the evening of May 28. The US $31.38 million limit was reached on January 19. In talks to raise the ceiling, Republicans pushed for a 19-year government spending cap that the Biden administration disagreed with.

One of the provisions of the agreement provides for the suspension until January 1, 2025 of paragraph 3101 (b) of section 31 “Currency and finance” of the US Code. It states that the nominal amount of liabilities, together with interest guaranteed by the US government, cannot exceed “$14.294 trillion at a time” (this is the original ceiling, which has been revised many times since its introduction in the code). It also states that the limit can be changed by Congress. The last time this happened was in 2021, when the national debt ceiling was raised by $2.5 trillion to $31.4 trillion.