DENVER - The national debt is an astronomical number that is heading towards $14.3 trillion. You'll hear a lot of ideas from both political parties about how to fix it.
On Tuesday night, the Treasury Secretary warned both sides of Congress what will happen if they don't raise that limit.
Timothy Geithner told congressional leaders failure to raise the limit would force the government to stop paying Social Security and Medicare benefits.
It would also stop sending out tax refunds and cancel payment of military salaries.
Defaulting on the debt would result in an economic crisis, which, by most estimates, could exceed the Great Recession.
Geithner went on to say that the U.S. will hit the debt ceiling of $14.29 trillion no later than May 16.
He believes extraordinary measures could delay a debt default, but only until July 8.
The debt ceiling has been raised 10 times in the last decade.
With the recent spending showdown nearly forcing a government shutdown, the push is on for Washington to address spending.
"At some point in time, just like individual consumers we may be faced with a cutoff in credit," University of Denver finance Professor Mac Clouse said.
Clouse says if Congress doesn't increase our limit, the fear is that the U.S. would default on its treasury obligations.
While he doesn't think the government will let that happen, he says the option of keeping the limit and paying down the debt isn't as easy as it sounds.
"We have to pay interest on that each year and the amounts of dollars that are spent paying interest on our national debt are dollars that could be going toward job creation, they could be doing things to reduce taxes. In many ways it's just an artificial ceiling, it makes people feel good to say there is a debt limit we can only borrow so much, and by the way we change that every time we need to, so it's not real," Clouse said.
The president will give his budget address at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, and is also expected to ask Congress to allow the country to borrow more money.
Congress would have to make a decision before the debt limit is reached in mid-May.
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