Businesses Push Debt-Limit Hike as Part of Deal on 'Fiscal Cliff'
November 23, 2012
Businesses want Washington to increase the U.S. debt limit as part of a package to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” thus averting two crises in one go.
But conservative Republican lawmakers would cry foul. For, while corporate America wants to head off market turmoil and the economic uncertainty that debt-limit drama might bring, Republicans want to use the threat of a debt-limit standoff to extract the biggest spending cuts possible.
The Treasury Department says the government will reach its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by the end of the year. But “extraordinary measures” could delay the need for a new, higher, limit until early 2013.