Obama Requests $1.2 Trillion Rise in Borrowing Limit
Saturday, 14 January 2012, 00:29 IST
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Washington: U.S. President Barack Obama requested Congress to raise the federal government's borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion, as the government is facing mounting budgetary pressure. It was the third and final such request the president would make under the bipartisan deal inked last August to prevent a government default. If approved by Congress, the increase would boost the federal government's borrowing capacity to $16.4 trillion, reports Xinhua. The Obama administration announced late December that it would ask Congress to raise the federal government's borrowing limit within a week, since the debt subject to limit was within $100 billion. However, in order to allow vacationing lawmakers time to consider the petition, Obama postponed the request. After months of contentious partisan wrangling, Republicans and Democrats last summer reached agreement to increase the federal government's borrowing limit by $2.1 trillion from about $14.3 trillion in three steps. The borrowing limit of US federal government was raised in August and September by $400 billion and $500 billion respectively. The federal government registered a $1.299 trillion budget deficit for the 2011 fiscal year ending September, with an average of about $108 billion per month. Treasury figures released show that the US federal government registered a budget deficit of nearly $86 billion dollars in December, bringing the total budget deficit of the first three months of the 2012 budget year to $321.7 billion.
Source: IANS
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