Congress still playing around with the debt ceiling. They have a deal, but haven’t worked out the final terms to approve it yet. If congress doesn’t approve the deal by mid February, the US will default. Read full story below..

Stock Market News – Congress Still Taking Their Sweet Time On Debt Ceiling

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Stocks are so far looking past the brewing congressional debt ceiling drama but that could change quickly if it becomes very contentious.

As if in a chorus, President Barack Obama, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner all warned on Monday that Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling to allow the U.S. to pay its bills. In a letter to Congress, Geithner said the U.S. will hit the ceiling between mid-February and early March, and noted that the government would then have to be funded by whatever cash the Treasury Department has on hand on a given day. He warned even a brief default would be terribly damaging.

Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, called again on the Obama administration to prioritize payments to bondholders should Congress fail to increase the $16.4 trillion debt limit, a move they say would prevent a default. The Obama administration has said that plan would not work. House Republicans said they won’t agree to raise the debt limit without equivalent amounts of spending cuts.

“Raising the debt ceiling, which Congress has to do periodically, gives the government the ability to pay its existing bills. It doesn’t create new deficits, it doesn’t create new spending,” said Bernanke during an appearance Monday at the University of Michigan.

Bernanke said the “fiscal cliff” deal was progress but the U.S. is still “not out of the woods,” pointing to the debt ceiling debate in Congress and the “sequestration” or automatic spending cuts that need to be addressed. “We are approaching a number of other fiscal critical watersheds,” he said.

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