As discussions around the debt ceiling continue in Washington and the deadline for a potential U.S. default coming as soon as next week, Wally Adeyemo, deputy secretary of the treasury, said Thursday that the "manufactured crisis" has already hurt U.S. taxpayers and could negatively impact markets.
"Ultimately, the United States has the ability to pay its bills, and it should do that in the same way that we've done it for more than 200 years," said Mr. Adeyemo at the Investment Company Institute Leadership Summit in Washington. "That has real costs that we're in this manufactured crisis. It has costs in terms of our ability to borrow. We auctioned bills right after the secretary sent her first letter (in January), it cost us $80 million more dollars to borrow for those bills and ultimately that's money out of the American peoples' pockets."