Yellen tells Congress US expected to hit debt limit Thursday

By FATIMA HUSSEIN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has notified Congress that the U.S. is projected to reach its debt limit on Thursday and will then resort to “extraordinary measures” to avoid default. Those measures include delaying some payments in order to provide some headroom to make other payments that are deemed essential, like those for Social Security and debt instruments. Yellen said Friday that while her department can’t estimate how long extraordinary measures will allow the U.S. to continue to pay the government’s obligations, “it is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June.”