Treasury’s ‘Extraordinary’ Accounting: Deficit UP $138.7B in May, Debt DOWN $90B

Treasury’s ‘Extraordinary’ Accounting: Deficit UP $138.7B in May, Debt DOWN $90B | CNS News

Where did that additional $49.574 billion come from?

CNSNews.com asked the Treasury Department. A department spokesman pointed to the letter Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew sent to House Speaker John Boehner on May 17, which explained that the Treasury was going to begin using “extraordinary measures” to avoid hitting the current legal limit on the federal government’s debt.

.....Among the “extraordinary measures” the Treasury can use during a “Debt Issuance Suspension Period,” Lew explained in the appendix to his letter, is to change the way it accounts for the pension funds of federal employees.