“Some in Congress are endangering this progress by once again manufacturing a crisis for our country. By waiting to the last minute to act on the debt limit, Congress could cause a terrible accident,” Lew said in an op-ed published Monday in the daily USA Today.Treasury has named Nov. 3 as the day when it will no longer have the funds it needs to meet its obligations, with “less than $30 billion cash available to fund a nearly $4 trillion enterprise.”

Lew noted that this date “is not an abstraction; failure to raise the debt limit would mean devastating impacts for taxpayers, consumers and businesses.”

Two weeks ago he sent a letter warning leaders of Congress about the urgent need to raise the debt ceiling, which currently stands at $18.1 trillion, and not play games with the federal government’s solvency.

He also said that Treasury has been using “extraordinary measures to borrow money” to meet its obligations.

In his article, Lew specifically recalled the consequences of the last two episodes of last-ditch negotiations in Congress to raise the debt ceiling.

In 2011, he said, the credit rating of the United States was downgraded for the first time in its history, while in 2013 the partial shutdown of the federal government cost taxpayers “between $38 million and $70 million in additional borrowing costs alone.”

The Obama administration continues negotiating with the Republican congressional leadership in pursuit of a compromise on the debt ceiling.