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IPFS News Link • Economy - Economics USA

Bernanke Cautions Against Using Debt Limit as ‘Bargaining Chip’

• http://www.bloomberg.com/
 

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke cautioned lawmakers against using the federal debt limit as a “bargaining chip” during budget talks, saying such moves could provoke market instability and harm the economy.

“I think using the debt limit as a bargaining chip is quite risky,” the Fed chief said today in testimony to the Senate Banking Committee in Washington. Failure to raise the debt limit would “at minimum” lead to “an increase ininterest rates, which would actually worsen our deficit and would hurt all borrowers in the economy.”

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has said lawmakers must raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling before Aug. 2 or risk a default. The Republican Study Committee, a group of self-described fiscal conservatives, is circulating a letter asking House Speaker John Boehner to back a plan that would cut the federal deficit in half in one year in exchange for a vote to approve in increase in the statutory debt limit. The measure would reduce spending by about $380 billion in fiscal 2012.


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