United States debt-ceiling crisis of 2011

The United States debt-ceiling crisis of 2011 was a stage in the ongoing political debate in the United States Congress about the appropriate level of government spending and its effect on the national debt and deficit. The debate centered around the raising of the debt ceiling, which is normally raised without debate. The crisis led to the passage of the Budget Control Act of 2011.

The Republican Party, which had retaken the House of Representatives the prior year, demanded that the President negotiate over deficit reduction in exchange for an increase in the debt ceiling, the statutory maximum of money the Treasury is allowed to borrow. The debt ceiling had routinely been raised in the past without partisan debate and without any additional terms or conditions. This reflects the fact that the debt ceiling does not prescribe the amount of spending, but only ensures that the government can pay for the spending to which it has already committed itself. Some use the analogy of an individual "paying their bills."

If the United States breached its debt ceiling and were unable to resort to other "extraordinary measures", the Treasury would have to either default on payments to bondholders or immediately curtail payment of funds owed to various companies and individuals that had been mandated but not fully funded by Congress. Both situations would likely have led to a significant international financial crisis.

On July 31, two days prior to when the Treasury estimated the borrowing authority of the United States would be exhausted, Republicans agreed to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for a complex deal of significant future spending cuts. The crisis did not permanently resolve the potential of future use of the debt ceiling in budgetary disputes, as shown by the subsequent debt-ceiling crisis of 2013.

The crisis sparked the most volatile week for financial markets since the 2008 crisis, with the stock market trending significantly downward. Prices of government bonds ("Treasuries"), rose as investors, anxious over the dismal prospects of the US economic future and the ongoing European sovereign-debt crisis, fled into the still-perceived relative safety of US government bonds. Later that week, the credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's downgraded the credit rating of the United States government for the first time in the country's history, though the other two major credit-rating agencies, Moody's and Fitch, retained America's credit rating at AAA. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that the delay in raising the debt ceiling increased government borrowing costs by $1.3 billion in 2011 and also pointed to unestimated higher costs in later years. The Bipartisan Policy Center extended the GAO's estimates and found that delays in raising the debt ceiling would raise borrowing costs by $18.9 billion.

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