Explaining the Debt Limit, and Why it Needs to Go Away

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

America’s debt limit is a vestige of a different time, when Congress used to approve individual bond offerings by the U.S. Treasury, but recently the debt ceiling has become a dumb bargaining chip. As you often hear, the debt limit restricts how much the Treasury can borrow to fund initiatives that Congress has already authorized — things like the military, roads, farmer subsidies, healthcare…