The U.S. debt ceiling is an anachronistic throwback economic concept that requires Congress vote to approve the borrowing

of money required to pay the government's debts each year. This would not be a burden if the government

didn't spend more than it pulls in, because then the vote would be just do we pay this bill? Yes,

we do. But because the U.S. government has operated with a deficit of between $400 billion

and $300 trillion every year for the past decade, that has meant a lot of votes to raise the debt

ceiling, the total amount allowed to be spent on such debts by a lot of Congress people with

different ideas about how to run things to ensure the U.S. government can pay these already

accumulated debts. Those votes, again, allowing the debt ceiling to be increased a little or a lot on a

semi-regular basis. This limit has been increased 78 times since 1960, and though the ceiling has been

suspended and then reestablished a few times during that period,

it's been a pretty consistent element of U.S. political life for more than 60 years now. It has not,

however, been a political football throughout that entire span of time, but in recent years this

obligation, and it is an obligation, not a choice, despite it sometimes being framed as

something we can just choose not to do. That would be akin to deciding not to pay one's credit card

bill, because you don't want to. This is money that has already been spent and debts that have

already been accrued, not a determination to take on fresh debts. In recent years, that obligation

has been sometimes leveraged

as a cudgel by one party against the other, generally by the Republicans against the Democrats,

when there is a Democratic president in office. So when there is a Democrat in the White House,

Republicans will say they want spending cuts and will threaten not to vote to raise this

debt limit, which would cause the U.S. government to default, causing all sorts of major issues,

ranging from a diminishment of our international credit rating to widespread mistrust in our capacity,

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