The Senate just approved the debt ceiling deal and President Obama will sign it later today. That means it’s time to declare a winner from last month’s pool. The three items you had to guess were:
- When will an agreement be reached?
- How much will the debt ceiling be increased?
- Will there be any revenue increases in the deal? How much?
My guesses were August 7, $1.7 trillion, and $200 billion. Not too bad! The correct answer is slightly variable, but assuming that (a) Congress fails to approve a balanced budget amendment and (b) Obama asks for the maximum increase he’s allowed to, the deal raises the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion. So the winning combination is August 2, $2.1 trillion, and zero.
So who won? Here are the closest guesses:
- shooter242: August 2, $1 trillion, zero.
- Model62: August 2, $2 trillion, a little bit via COLA adjustments to tax brackets
- cld: August 2, “a lot,” zero.
- Austin_Will: August 1, $1.5 trillion, zero.
In the original post, I defined “a lot” as “the full $2 trillion or so,” so I think that makes cld the winner. Congratulations! And good work from the runners up too. Your non-prizes will not be mailed out to you shortly.