(CNN) — Congress now has two fewer days to deal with the debt ceiling.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Thursday he now estimates that “no later than” November 3, Treasury is likely to exhaust special accounting measures that are keeping the country’s debt below its legal limit.

Earlier this month, he had said the alarm would start to go off on November 5.

Now, Lew said, on November 3 the Treasury Department will only be able to pay the country’s bills with the cash it has on hand — which Lew expects to be roughly $30 billion.

And that would not be enough to cover the bills on some days, which can amount to $60 billion.

“Operating the United States government with no borrowing authority, and with only the cash on hand on a given day, would be profoundly irresponsible,” Lew wrote in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner.

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