evidence: US Hits Its $31.4 Trillion Debt Limit: What Now? The United States officially hit its congressionally authorized borrowing limit of $31.381 trillion on Thursday, forcing the Treasury Department to start using "extraordinary measures" to avoid a market-shaking default on its debt. [...] House Republicans are also pushing to balance the federal budget in 10 years — and to do so by only cutting spending, not raising revenue, a feat that Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, says is simply impossible. Similarly, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said in an analysis published this month that, to achieve balance within a decade, "all spending would need to be cut by roughly one-quarter and that the necessary cuts would grow to 85 percent if defense, veterans, Social Security, and Medicare spending were off the table."