Janet Yellen Gives New June 5 Deadline on Debt Ceiling–Gives Cover to Biden for Holiday Weekend Vacation

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sent a letter Friday afternoon to Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) that extends the debt ceiling deadline from June 1 to June 5. The letter comes as negotiations remain deadlocked as Joe Biden heads out of town for the holiday weekend. With no deal in sight, McCarthy told the House to go home until he calls them back for a vote, which he has said will abide by the 72 hour rule for members to review the deal.

Biden is headed to Camp David on Friday and is set to stay until Sunday when he will head to his Wilmington, Delaware home. On Monday Biden will lead the Memorial Day remembrance at Arlington Cemetery.

Even as she gave the negotiators a few more days to hammer out an agreement, Yellen used a threat of not having enough money to fund Social Security and Medicare as a fear tactic against McCarthy.

Also, after demands from Republicans to show financial numbers to back up her deadline, Yellen included some in her letter.

WASHINGTON (@CNN) — US Treasury provides new June 5th X-date as negotiations continue over debt ceiling impasse. Full letter from Secretary Yellen to Speaker McCarthy here: pic.twitter.com/MNmuXeU5kz

— Mike Valerio (@ValerioCNN) May 26, 2023

Dear Mr. Speaker:

I am writing to follow up on my previous letters regarding the debt limit and to provide additional information regarding the Treasury Department’s ability to continue to finance the operations of the federal government. Since January, I have highlighted to you the risk that Treasury would be unable to satisfy all of our obligations by early June if Congress did not raise or suspend the debt limit before that time. In my letters, I also noted that I would continue to update Congress as more information became available. Based on the most recent available data, we now estimate that Treasury will have insufficient resources to satisfy the government’s obligations if Congress has not raised or suspended the debt limit by June 5.

We will make more than $130 billion of scheduled payments in the first two days of June, including payments to veterans and Social Security and Medicare recipients. These payments will leave Treasury with an extremely low level of resources. During the week of June 5, Treasury is scheduled to make an estimated $92 billion of payments and transfers, including a regularly scheduled quarterly adjustment that would result in an investment in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds of roughly $36 billion. Therefore, our projected resources would be inadequate to satisfy all of these obligations.

Yesterday we used an additional extraordinary measure that Treasury has employed in a number of past debt limit episodes: a swap of approximately $2 billion of Treasury securities between the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Federal Financing Bank. While this measure has not been used since 2015 due to its limited size, the extremely low level of remaining resources demands that I exhaust all available extraordinary measures to avoid being unable to meet all of the government’s commitments.

We have learned from past debt limit impasses that waiting until the last minute to suspend or increase the debt limit can cause serious harm to business and consumer confidence, raise short-term borrowing costs for taxpayers, and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States. In fact, we have already seen Treasury’s borrowing costs increase substantially for securities maturing in early June. If Congress fails to increase the debt limit, it would cause severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position, and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests.

I continue to urge Congress to protect the full faith and credit of the United States by acting as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

Janet L. Yellen

Identical letter sent to:

The Honorable Hakeem Jeffries, House Democratic Leader

The Honorable Charles E. Schumer, Senate Majority Leader

The Honorable Mitch McConnell, Senate Republican Leader

cc:

The Honorable Jason Smith, Chairman, House Committee on Ways and Means

The Honorable Richard E. Neal, Ranking Member, House Committee on Ways and Means

The Honorable Ron Wyden, Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance

The Honorable Mike Crapo, Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Finance

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/janet-yellen-gives-new-june-5-deadline-debt/

54-Nation Alliance Reveals How Many Billions Pumped Into Ukraine

The Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which is centered out of Ramstein Air Base, is an alliance of 54 countries supporting Ukraine militarily against Russia.

In a new press briefing marking the 12th meeting of the group, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin revealed the total tally of funds and military aid pumped into Kiev. "In total, the Contact Group has committed nearly $65 billion in security assistance," while stressing the Western allies are "as united as ever." This total figure is separate from the Washington overall commitment as far as Ukraine aid goes, which is even larger.

This already huge figure is about to leap significantly higher, given that as Austin said, "And, last week, President Biden announced that the United States will support a joint effort with our allies and partners to train Ukrainian pilots on fourth-generation aircraft, including F-16s. We hope this training will begin in the coming weeks."

The Pentagon chief then thanked Denmark and the Netherlands for this week stepping up to lead European coalition in providing F-16 training for Ukrainian pilots. The program is expected to take multiple months to up to a year or more.

"In the coming weeks, my Dutch and Danish counterparts will work with the United States and other allies to develop a training framework," Austin said. "Norway, Belgium, Portugal and Poland have already offered to contribute to training, and we expect more countries to join this important initiative soon."

Austin further emphasized that the United States is "committed to standing with Ukraine for the long haul." He also announced a new commitment to provide Kiev with "additional air-defense systems and munitions" which will be "crucial" for "protecting Ukraine’s skies and civilian infrastructure from Russia’s assault."

Additionally, US Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley explained that F-16's won't act as a "magic weapon" against the superior armed Russian air force:

“The Russians have 1,000 fourth-generation fighters… If you’re gonna contest Russia in the air, you’re gonna need a substantial amount of fourth and fifth generation fighters, so if you look at the cost curve and do the analysis, the smartest thing to have done is exactly what we did do, which is provide a significant amount of integrated air defenses to cover the battlespace and deny the Russians the airspace."

He previewed that a sustained program will run into the billions more….

"So, you're talking about $2 billion for 10 aircraft," he said. "The Russians have thousands of fourth- and fifth-generation fighters. So, if you're going to contest Russia in the air, you're going to need a substantial amount of fourth- and fifth-generation fighters. If you look at the cost curve and do the analysis, the smartest thing to have done is exactly what we did do, which is provide a significant amount of integrated air defense to cover the battlespace and deny the Russians the airspace. And that is exactly what happened."

For the future, F-16s have a role, the general said. But it is "going to take a considerable length of time to build up an air force that's the size and scope and scale that'll be necessary."

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/54-nation-alliance-reveals-how-many-billions-pumped-ukraine

It’s almost like something changed in the past few years like, oh, I don’t know, the TQIA part started forcing themselves on our children, sexualizing our kids, pushing graphic porn in elementary school libraries, pretending that not wanting a toddler to learn about graphic sex acts is censorship, encouraging toddlers to mutilate their bodies and effectively castrate themselves, pushing to do so without parental consent, having men become spokesmen for major women’s brands from makeup to sports bras to freaking tampons, aggressively pushing biological men into women’s sports, taking scholarships and championships away from women who are the best in their field and worker their whole lives to get there and viciously criticizing them for being outraged, voting to remove children from parents who disagree with the most impressionable minds in society being influenced by radicals in the movement to make permanent life alerting decisions a decade before they could buy a pack of cigarettes, attacking and mocking Christians, and forcing dildo crucifix drag shows and outright blasphemy at public events, pushing satanic themed trans clothing lines on our kids in major retailers, pushing ideas that could not reasonably be described as anything other than grooming each and every day while re-branding fucking pedophiles as M.A.P.S. (Minor Attracted Persons), writing articles about how children should be able to consent to sexual activity with adults, writing legislation that would prevent discrimination in the job world against those who are admitted to pedophiles, making drag queen story hour a thing, and when the graphic events get called out or children are banned from attending they cancel the event altogether almost as if the events sole purpose was to lure children in… I could go on for hours.

Yea, I wonder what changed???

Just because the most radical people in the movement say these things are great and normal, and the media pretends it’s not happening, doesn’t mean the rest of American society is going to go along with their degenerate bullshit. We have had enough!

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1662071684541603841

US Lawmakers Publish 10 Ways To Prepare For War With China Over Taiwan

"At the select committee’s Taiwan war game, we saw the terrifying result of deterrence failure,” Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) said ahead ahead of the vote to approve advancing the measures.

"If we want to have a hope of stopping World War III, we need to arm Taiwan to the teeth right now. We must clear the embarrassment that is the $19 billion [foreign military sale] backlog," he added.

The panel shared the 10 recommendations as follows:

1. Manufacture & supply more long-range missiles to the Indo-Pacific region

2. Devise severe economic costs in concert with our allies ahead of time, should China act against Taiwan

3. Expand combined military training between the United States and Taiwan

4. Deliver the $19 billion of backlogged military equipment and weapons that Taiwan ordered from the United States

5. Establish a US military Joint Task Force or Joint Force HQ for crisis command and control in Indo-Pacific Command

6. Enhance cyber resiliency in US critical infrastructure, especially at port, air, and rail facilities with emphasis on military mobility

7. Help train Taiwan to strengthen its own cybersecurity

8. Create a US-Taiwan Combined Planning Group to build stronger relationships between our defense forces

9. Strengthen US military posture in the region by expanding bases with allies, hardening fuel depots, and enhancing logistics

10. Expand Taiwan’s military stockpiles and resiliency to attack

Of course, there are many other analysts who would point out that "arming to the teeth" and independent breakaway island in China's own backyard is precisely what could usher in WW3, akin to the years-long Western involvement in Ukraine and how this provoked Russia.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/us-lawmakers-publish-10-ways-prepare-war-china-over-taiwan