Senator Mitch McConnell had a message for Americans increasingly concerned that the economy is going to collapse if the federal debt ceiling isn’t raised: Relax.

“Look, I think everybody needs to relax,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican and minority leader with extensive experience in debt-limit showdowns, told reporters at home earlier this week. “Regardless of what may be said about day-to-day conversations, the president and the speaker will come to an agreement. Ultimately, it will pass through a bipartisan vote in both the House and the Senate. The country will not enter into default”.

That may be a case of easier said than done. While Mr. McConnell, President Biden, and President Kevin McCarthy have repeatedly reassured Americans that there will be no default, that assurance is looking a bit shakier with just over a week to go before it is projected to be due. the US Treasury runs out of cash to pay. obligations

Even if negotiators agree to a deal soon, an outcome that seemed within reach but had yet to materialize as talks continued on Friday, much remains to be done, including winning approval in the House and Senate. That outcome is not certain given growing unrest, and some open opposition, on both the right and left. At this point, no one can be absolutely sure that the United States will not collapse off the precipice of default, even if no one involved wants that to happen. The time is short.

“Nobody can guarantee that there won’t be a default, if only for the reason that the clock is ticking down pretty quickly,” said G. William Hoagland, a longtime Republican budget guru on Capitol Hill who is now a senior vice president. . at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “We are on thin ice to a large extent.”

Negotiators got a breather Friday afternoon with the Treasury secretary’s announcement that the default deadline had been moved four days later, to June 5. urgency to seal a deal.

“We are within the window of being able to do this, and we have to come to some really tough terms in these closing hours,” said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, a North Carolina Republican and McCarthy’s top negotiator. “We will backtrack on final, important issues, and it’s just not resolved.”

Since the start of the impasse, Mr. Biden and congressional leaders have tried to assuage concerns that a default would happen, essentially saying it was unthinkable because Congress has narrowly avoided default before. After one of the high-level meetings at the White House, Senator Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Majority Leader, applauded the fact that all four leaders had said that default was off the table.

Part of his motivation in offering these constant guarantees was to bolster his own forces, calm the public and prevent financial markets from crashing as the talks progressed.

But President Biden changed his tune slightly during his visit to Japan last weekend, saying for the first time that if Republicans insisted on pushing the issue to the limit, maybe default was an option after all.

“I can’t guarantee that they won’t force a default by doing something outrageous,” Biden told reporters. “I can’t guarantee that.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat and minority leader, expressed a similar sentiment when asked this week if he could still be sure the government would not default.

“Not with this group,” he said, referring to Republicans, some of whom he suspects wouldn’t mind the financial chaos resulting from a default if they thought it could help them politically in 2024.

Mr. McCarthy, the House leader and a California Republican, has also repeatedly stated that there would be no default and stressed Friday that he believed the outcome would be positive.

“I am a total optimist,” he told reporters as negotiations continued with no apparent progress.

One way Mr. McCarthy has said a default could be avoided is for the Senate to pass and the president to sign the measure that Republicans passed in the House to raise the debt limit while making deep budget cuts and reversing other initiatives. of the Biden administration. But that’s unlikely to happen even if the Treasury runs out of money. McCarthy also ruled out a short-term emergency suspension of the debt ceiling.

Even a deal between House Republicans and Biden would not end the drama; in some respects, it would be just the beginning.

House Republicans have a 72-hour rule for the time between when legislation is made public and when it is voted on, a timeline that pushes the showdown ever closer to the early-June deadline. of the Treasury.

Also, with far-right elements in the Republican conference joining progressive Democrats in expressing reservations about the deal taking shape, McCarthy and Jeffries may have to thread the needle to produce the necessary votes from both sides. to obtain agreement approval. .

Mr. McCarthy and his leadership team will have to gauge with extreme precision the number of Republicans committed to voting for any final budget deal that includes a debt limit increase. They will then need to inform Mr. Jeffries how many votes Democrats need to produce to ensure that at least 218 lawmakers support the package.

A miscalculation could spell disaster. With the nation in deep financial crisis in September 2008, the House surprised the Bush administration by not passing its bank bailout program. In a chaotic turn of events in the House of Representatives, the measure failed as many Republicans refused to endorse it despite presidential pleas and some Democrats also refused. The stock market plunged in real time as the vote unfolded. Four days later, the members of the House of Representatives returned and approved the proposal with some changes.

Some believe it might take a similar scenario now to push the debt limit plan through Congress: a failed vote and a market crash that underscores the economic consequences of a default and motivates lawmakers to act. Others would prefer it not come to that given the potentially serious ramifications of even a brief default.

“I’ve been of the optimistic view that it wouldn’t happen, but the more time passes, the more likely it seems to me,” said Mr Hoagland, the budget expert. “Time is up to do this, but I just pray that a default doesn’t happen.”

Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.