“We don’t expect an increase to be needed before the summer, and it could go quite some time beyond that,” Akabas said. “It’s hard to put an exact figure on it.”

Both Obama and the Republican Congress insist they have no interest in repeating the drama seen in the summer of 2011, where a last-minute increase in the debt ceiling prompted the first downgrade of American debt in history.

But with few “must pass” bills awaiting the new Congress, some Republicans are likely to see the debt-ceiling bill as leverage to force Obama into accepting spending cuts and changes to entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the new chairman of the House Budget Committee, suggested last year that the GOP might consider requiring that any debt hike be matched by equivalent spending cuts, a standard that was pushed by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in…