The ceiling Congress sets on total federal debt; gaps in the line mark suspension periods. For markets, a binding limit is less a fiscal event than a money-market one — it flips the switch on bill supply and dictates the path of the TGA.
This graph shows the statutory debt limit of the United States. A discontinuity in the line indicates that the debt limit is temporarily suspended.
Why it matters: Once the ceiling binds, the Treasury turns to "extraordinary measures" (accounting maneuvers like suspending reinvestment in government trust funds) and lives off the TGA — the projected day the cash runs out is the X-date. Three regularities matter for trading: first, bills maturing near the X-date cheapen into a visible yield "hump," the market's direct price on technical-default risk; second, while the limit binds, net bill supply stalls and the falling TGA acts as a passive liquidity injection; third, resolution brings a catch-up surge of bill issuance and a rapid TGA rebuild that pulls liquidity back out — after June 2023, over a trillion dollars of new bills were absorbed almost entirely by money funds drawing down the ON RRP. Read this page with the TGA and RRP levels side by side.