My imperfect understanding, from studying other sources, is that this is not correct at all. What the poster is describing is, in fact, what the government has

My imperfect understanding, from studying other sources, is that this is not correct at all. What the poster is describing is, in fact, what the government has been doing for several months -- using cash inflows to keep paying the bills, while rolling over expiring debts into new ones. August 2 is the date when we will no longer have enough cash on-hand to keep paying our obligations. In addition, a large raft of monthly Social Security checks are scheduled to go out at the end of next week, so even if the estimates are wrong and we can make it a few extra days, that singular large expense will be enough to push us over the brink.