Treasury Secretary John Snow announced on 14 October 2004 that the United States government would immediately halt contributions to the federal employees' Government Securities Investment Fund, a step taken to prevent the government from breaching its $7.38 trillion statutory borrowing limit.
Snow said the suspended payments would be repaid in full once the government had room to maneuver, leaving the fund and its beneficiaries unaffected in the end.
The move came after Congress failed to act on Snow's 2 August request to raise the legal debt ceiling. Snow warned that by mid-November the government would exhaust all remaining accounting options, at which point only a congressional vote could prevent a breach.
The political backdrop made the situation delicate. A vote to lift the borrowing cap risked becoming a liability for Republicans in the weeks before the 2 November presidential election. Democrats had been arguing that sweeping Bush-era tax cuts were responsible for the rapid growth in federal debt.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in October 2004, in its own words.