"I respectfully urge Congress to protect the full faith and credit of the United States by acting as soon as possible," Yellen said in a letter to congressional leaders.
Yellen also said that the Treasury Department on Monday began using "extraordinary measures" to prevent the United States from defaulting, including a debt-issuance suspension period lasting through Sept. 30 and suspending investments in retirement funds for civil servants and postal workers.
Yellen previously warned that the U.S. Treasury could exhaust those extraordinary measures soon after lawmakers return to Washington from their summer recess in mid-September.
The Congressional Budget Office also warned recently that the United States is at risk of a default in October or November unless the Congress raises or suspends the debt limit.
Assuming the debt limit is either raised or suspended, the U.S. Treasury said Monday that it expects to issue almost 1.4 trillion U.S. dollars of debt in the second half of the year.
As part of a bipartisan budget deal enacted in August 2019, Congress suspended the debt limit through July 31, 2021. On Sunday, the debt limit was reinstated at a level covering all borrowing that occurred during the suspension, which had risen to 28.5 trillion dollars as of the end of June.
The debt limit, commonly called the debt ceiling, is the total amount of money that the U.S. government is authorized to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations, including social security and medicare benefits, interest on the national debt, and other payments.
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