Ok, as I understand it....

Silverbird

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The Government could no longer be able to borrow (debt ceiling) but the Government keeps running because we have a budget, and the passing the budget does not do anything to the debt ceiling even though it creates spending obligations???
 
No.

The government can no longer sell treasury bills (I.O.U's), because we've hit a magical fictitional number (debt ceiling).

The government can keep running, temporarily, because the government can "borrow" the money offically sitting in the FERS retirement account, the CSRS retirement account, and several other trust fund accounts that happen to be laying around. The government simply goes in, takes the cash, replaces it with I.O.U's to be paid later, and keeps on running.

It can continue to do that switchout of money - until roughly August 1st or so.

The passing of the budget has no effect. The passing of the budget AUTHORIZES and APPROPRIATES MONEY to be spent. But the law says we can only borrow so much.

Kind of like if the BANK that you were planning on borrowing money from says "You're approved for a million dollar house loan".

But then, when you pick out the house, you go back to the bank to close the deal, and the bank says "Sure, we approved you for the million dollar home loan. But we only have $100, 000 that we can actually lend you. And we got that, because we "borrowed" it out of the home equity that Joe has over there in HIS house. Joe won't mind, and we'll loan you Joe's money, but we promise to pay Joe back Tuesday, for a hamburger today. "

Or something like that.

Sort of like that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ6xBaZ92uA
 
So, can we get furloughed? Could we get paid with IOUs? Though of course by the time it gets to that it might be the least of the US problems....
 
So, can we get furloughed? Could we get paid with IOUs? Though of course by the time it gets to that it might be the least of the US problems....

Exactly.

And #1- yes, #2- technicnally yes, but technincally you already get paid with I.O.U's. You get "federal reserve notes", not actual hard currency, when you get paid.

Actually, you get an electronic "I.O.U." sent to your bank account, then THEY give you those funny little pieces of paper called "federal reserve notes", which, in reality , are not backed with anything.

Just ask Ron Paul. :-)

federal_reserve_billion_note_lg.jpg
 
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