“There is no option that prevents us from being in default if we don’t have enough cash to pay our bills,” Lew said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning. “The White House has spoken quite clearly to this.”

He said that the president came to the conclusion that he “does not have the authority to take action in that kind of a way” after meeting with his lawyers.

Some legal scholars have floated a few options for how President Obama could unilaterally raise the debt ceiling if Congress does not. In an interview on Friday, the president seemed to leave some wiggle room on the issue when he told the Associated Press that he didn’t “expect to get there.”