5th Conservative government shutdown looms earlier than anticipated due to GOP tax cuts [View all]

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The Finance 202: Here's one unhappy side effect of the Republican tax bill - WaPo

How the GOP tackles the funding along with the immigration quagmire — and the increasingly front-burner question of the debt limit — will be a focus for the party at its retreat this week. But for the moment, “it’s about as clear as mud,” one senior GOP aide tells me.

One immediate effect of the GOP’s $1.5 trillion tax cut you won’t hear the party crowing over: The revenue it’s draining from federal coffers has moved up the deadline for lawmakers to lift the debt ceiling.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a Wednesday letter urged Congress to extend the feds’ borrowing authority “as soon as possible” because his department has only enough leash to guarantee it can cover its bills through February.

The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more optimistic, projecting the Treasury will run out of cash in the first half of March. The CBO had predicted lawmakers had until late March or April to lift the debt ceiling. But the agency reassessed that timeline in the wake of new tax guidelines instructing employers to withhold less from their workers starting no later than the middle of this month. That change will cut tax receipts by $10 billion to $15 billion a month.


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Can anyone say Republican Deficits? $10 billion to $15 billion shortfall per month, not a surplus as the GOP claimed, on top of the deficits this WH is running already? Yeah, that's not going to leave a mark.