Credit Card Conservatives

Remember how Republicans were supposed to be the party of fiscal discipline?

It turns out, not so much.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday said the United States may be unable to pay its bills this fall unless Congress raises the government's borrowing authority, now capped at $8.965 trillion.

Paulson, in a letter to lawmakers, estimated the government is likely to bump into the statutory debt limit in early October.

“Accordingly, I am writing to request that Congress raise the statutory debt limit as soon as possible,” Paulson wrote. He did not say how much more borrowing authority the Bush administration needs.

Congress has already boosted the statutory debt limit several times during President Bush's tenure. The last time Congress upped the government's borrowing authority was in March 2006 when it agreed to raise the debt ceiling by $781 billion.

Gotta keep those upper-income tax cuts, though. They're generating so much revenue, you see.