The United States might have picked the perfect time to hit its debt limit.
On Monday, the U.S. officially hit the amount it is legally able to borrow, after the limit had been suspended in February 2014. But as the Congressional Budget Office has noted, there are a series of steps the Treasury Department can take that would give Congress until October or November to avoid a default.
A study out Monday from the Bipartisan Policy Center lays out just what factors and steps are now coming together to give Congress some breathing room.
One of the factors has to do with when people pay their taxes. Shai Akabas, associate economic policy director at BPC and one of the coauthors of the report, said that in the coming months the government will receive many net tax receipts.
"That's because a lot of these folks that are owed tax refunds file in the earlier part of tax season," Akabas told National Journal. "The people who are filing who owe additional money to the government will be filing tax revenue later this season." This essentially means there will likely be more money coming in April, when more people who owe the government money will be filing.
The government's timeline also benefits, according to the study, from a sliding deficit. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the deficit will stay at less than $500 billion for fiscal year 2015, meaning the debt will increase at a slower rate and thereby allow the Treasury Department to take measures to prevent default at a slower pace.