NAPS Leg/Reg Update- Fiscal Cliff and More

The Treasury announced it would take certain "extraordinary measures" to avoid hitting the debt ceiling on December 31, largely by temporarily using its civil service pension assets to reduce or stop government borrowing.  The Treasury said it would suspend its daily reinvestment of Treasury securities held by the G Fund, the money market fund within the Federal Thrift Savings Plan.  And it would redeem certain existing investments and suspend new investments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund as well to reduce government borrowing.  Without such measures, the Treasury said, the government would reach the $16.4 trillion debt ceiling on December 31.  The Treasury has taken similar measures in the past, most recently in August, 2011, when it came perilously close to breaching the debt ceiling.  The Treasury's announced moves are just one more way that the government uses its sizable federal and postal retirement assets as a piggy bank, even if only temporarily, to keep government finances afloat.