Today is Tuesday, January 17th, and you're listening to the Morning Announcements presented

by Betches Media.

I'm your host Sammy Sage, and the Morning Announcement is your daily five-minute breakdown of the headlines

that isn't afraid to take a side and boast the most consequential reality show there is, our government.

This episode is brought to you by Green Chef, the number one meal kit for eating well with dinners that work for you.

Buying for the most attention this week against George Santos and Biden's classified document, Scavenger Hunt,

is the looming debt ceiling deadline, which is coming up on Thursday.

Here's a quick refresher since we haven't had any debt ceiling drama since December 2021.

Congress has the power to control the government's budget, and the debt ceiling is the government's limit on how much they're allowed to borrow.

The Congress has the power to vote on increasing.

Historically, Congress has raised the debt limit when the U.S. Treasury has asked,

because the government has already budgeted and spent this money anyway.

And in theory, we are all on the same team here.

Team USA, am I right?

But it's become increasingly common at these junctures that a certain political party in Congress has used their majorities,

when they have them, to threaten not to raise the debt ceiling, in order to extract various concessions or spending cuts.

So all Congress has the power to essentially rubber stamp the increase in the debt limit.

They also have the power to potentially cause global economic chaos.

In the event that the House doesn't vote to raise the limit by the Thursday deadline,

the Treasury has it most a few months before the U.S. would default on its debt for the first time ever.

While that's never happened, we hit the debt limit for the first and only time in 2011.

And the result was that stock prices plummeted and the federal government had its credit rating downgraded for the first time ever.

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