WASHINGTON, July 26 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday called on lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling before they recess in August.

"As I have suggested in the past, based upon our best estimate at the time, we do have funding through September, but I have urged Congress to take this up before they leave for the recess," Mnuchin told lawmakers in a hearing before a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate, when talking about the fact that the U.S. had reached debt limit in March.

Currently, the U.S. Treasury Department is employing extraordinary cash management measures to continue to finance the government's activities.

"There is a significant cost" for taking the extraordinary measures, said the secretary. "As opposed to borrowing in the market at lower rates, we're borrowing and making our trust funds whole at slightly higher rates. So there is a real cost to doing that," he added.

"There is also an implied cost of uncertainty into the market. And the longer we wait, the more that uncertainty will be," said Mnuchin.

The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the federal government would not run out of cash until mid-October.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also said recently that he hoped Congress could vote to raise the debt limit before lawmakers leave for the August recess.

The debt limit is the maximum amount of debt that the Treasury can issue to the public and to the other federal agencies. The amount of outstanding debt subject to limit has now risen to about 19.9 trillion U.S. dollars. Enditem

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