Financial markets are suggesting the political drama surroundingcongressional efforts to raise the nation's debt ceiling will playout more like the lesser of two recent showdowns.

Investor angst, as measured by the CBOE Volatility Index, knownas both the VIX and the fear index, is below the levels experiencedduring 2011 and 2013 confrontations, even as lawmakers face ofdeadline of a little more than a month to reach an agreement.

The protracted battle in 2011 led S&P Global Ratings todowngrade the U.S.'s sovereign debt for the first time. In 2013,Congress struck a last-minute deal to end a four-week standoff thateconomists say took a notch out of economic growth and forced theFederal Reserve to put off tapering its bond purchases. Thisgo-round could tweak the Fed's monetary agenda again.

The Fed signaled last month that it intends to kick off thereduction of its $4.5 trillion balance sheet in September. It maydelay the move if the Treasury's borrowing authority isn'textended, according to Lou Crandall, chief economist at WrightsonICAP.

How much investors are willing to pay for insurance against thechance that politicians drop the ball and cause Treasury to defaulton its obligations — shattering the previously seen as unshakablefull faith and credit of U.S. debt in the process — is anotherlitmus test for investors' unrest.

While the cost to protect against a U.S. default over the nextfive years through credit-default swaps has jumped this month, thelevel is a fraction of record measures seen in 2011 and trails thecreep higher that took place in 2013. The CDS trade at 26 basispoints, meaning it costs 26,000 euros ($31,000) to insure 10million euros worth of Treasuries against default.

Investors are again avoiding the shortest government debtsecurities that mature around the possible default date, whilelong-term Treasuries appear to be beneficiaries of theuncertainty.

Even so, the overall added costs to taxpayers from the rise inTreasury rates in 2013 ranged from $38 million to more than $70million, according to a study by the Government AccountabilityOffice. In the 2011 event, it caused a $1.3 billion increase justin that fiscal year alone.

So far debt-ceiling fears are playing out like 2013, when theymostly put downward pressure on 10-year Treasury yields. That comesas the debt ceiling problem is complicated by threats fromPresident Donald Trump last week to shut down the government over abudge impasse if politicians don't fund his border wall.

“It's difficult to say at this point because we are still amonth away from the x-date,” said Sarah Carlson, a senior analystat Moody's Investors Service. “I can't say until this is over howto it compare to 2011 and 2013, because we haven't seen how thewhole thing plays out.”

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