Hello, this is Erica in Philadelphia. I just got the kids off to school and now I'm headed to my job at the city's Parks and Rec department.

It's not the Galapagos or Hawaii, but this is my life. This podcast was recorded at...

142 pm on Wednesday, January 18, 2023.

Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Here's the show!

I am so with you on the lack of glamour. I appreciate it when we have people calling us not from beaches. It makes me feel a little more kinship with ours.

They're just like us. Listeners, they're just like us. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Danielle Kurtzlaban. I cover politics. And I'm Susan Davis. I also cover politics.

The US government could be on the brink of financial chaos. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Congress this month that, quote,

the outstanding debt of the United States is projected to reach the statutory limit. And that happens tomorrow.

Tomorrow, the US bumps up against the debt limit. Disaster will not strike immediately. Yellen is taking what are known as extraordinary measures to keep paying the bills.

But that will only work for so long. And if Congress doesn't raise the debt limit in time, the US would default on its debt.

Q the chaos. Danielle, briefly, why do we have this weapon of mass destruction in our system?

That's a great question, because you're not a lot of countries have a debt ceiling. Only a few do.

But we do. And it is a congressional law that says the US can't take out more than a certain amount of debt.

Specifically, right now, it is around 31.4 trillion. So that is where our debt ceiling is. And every so often, we have these standoffs in between Congress and the White House within Congress over whether we should raise that.

Now, to be clear, this is not the amount that we have agreed to spend. This is the amount we have agreed to borrow.

We have already agreed to spend X amount on social security, Medicare, military, all sorts of things. This is not the budget.

This is we have agreed to spend. This is the analogy that's often used as a credit limit. So yes, this is will we allow ourselves to borrow the money to pay the things that we have already agreed to pay?

Okay, so we mentioned extraordinary measures. Does Janet Yellen go in a phone booth and put on a superhero costume?

What is an extraordinary measure and does it feel extraordinary?

That would be great, but no. So what has happened? So what happens is this on Thursday, we technically hits that 31.4 ish trillion dollar mark.

But what Janet Yellen and the Treasury can do are these extraordinary measures, which basically means shifting money around saying from account to account saying, okay, we will move money from over here where it's not being spent as fast to over here where we need it more.

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