The U.S. debt ceiling is a legal limit on how much already accrued debt the U.S.

government is allowed to pay off by accruing more debt.

If we think of the total US debt, which is something like $31.5 trillion, as of the day I'm recording this, as a credit card bill,

the debt ceiling says, in essence, no matter how much of that debt you need to pay off on a recurring basis, to not default on

all that spending.

No matter how big the payments you have to make, there is only so much you are allowed to

pay back using other sorts of debt, metaphorically paying using other credit cards.

This metaphor falls apart though when we consider that the US government and many other

governments often pay their debts with other sorts of debt. It doesn't work the same way for a government as it does for an individual or household because governments often sell bonds and treasury bills to raise money for necessary expenditures.

Paying the military, paying Medicare beneficiaries, paying for all sorts of safety net

related welfare programs, things like that.

It's possible that the U.S. could someday pay down all its debt and revert to a model in which

it doesn't need to raise money to pay its bills.

But it's been a while since that's been the case.

And some economists have argued it's actually

not so great to operate in that one-for-one dollar-in, dollar-out fashion, if you're hoping

to grow the economy.

There are a lot of opinions on this, and some contend that we should just go debt-free

as soon as possible, but it's not clear that doing so would be ideal, except in the

theoretical sense of not being in debt debt seeming like a generally good thing

But in any case it would be a while before that would even be an option so it's not something that's under discussion in the near term

That means we are in a situation in which there's a lot of debt to pay off things we we have already accrued debt on, not stuff that

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