Fiscal 2018 will not arrive until midnight on October 1st, but the debt ceiling will be breached the week before thanks in part to Hurricane Harvey.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin says Harvey relief spending will bring the debt ceiling forward by a matter of days.
“We obviously have now the hurricane spending, which is an issue. So that’s going to have some impact on our September spending,” Mnuchin said in a interview with broadcaster CNBC, adding that it could affect the debt ceiling deadline by a couple of days.
He also said projections may move around once the Treasury receives corporate tax receipts on Sept. 15.
A couple days may not sound like much, but Congress is only scheduled to be in session for 13 days this month and they also have to fund the federal government to prevent a shutdown from occurring on October 1st.
With the debt ceiling scheduled to be reached on September 29th, and with Harvey bringing that deadline forward "by a couple days," that means Congress may have fewer than 10 days of session to raise it.
I expect they will, but between the debt ceiling and an omnibus spending bill or a continuing resolution, it's hard to see Congress tackling anything else this month. I would say that's for the best. That leaves them less time to fuck other things up.