The debt ceiling might be the single dumbest feature of American law. Congress decides to spend money and later schedules a separate vote on whether the government will pay its bills. If the government doesn’t pay its bills, calamity ensues.
Moody’s Analytics estimates that even a short debt ceiling breach could cause a recession. An analysis by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers modeled a more protracted default and foresaw a crash on the order of the 2008 financial crisis: The stock market falls 45 percent, unemployment rises by five points, and America’s long-term borrowing costs are much, much higher. All of this to pay money we already owe and can easily borrow. Madness.
Defenders of the debt ceiling will tell you that the limit has been around a long time and has largely operated to the good. America has never defaulted on its debts, but the debt ceiling has often motivated compromise between the two parties. That may be true, but it’s a bit like saying that since America has won every game of Russian roulette it’s played so far, it should keep playing.
And so I understand — and share — the interest in ways to render the debt ceiling null and void. Democrats should have eliminated the debt ceiling when they held Congress and the White House in 2021 and 2022. But they didn’t.
Now two more unconventional tactics are proving particularly popular in the liberal imagination.
In one, President Biden simply declares the debt ceiling unconstitutional, pointing...
Since the start of Pope Leo XIV's papacy in May 2025, he has been the subject of numerous rumors about things he has said, his political opinions and more. As the first American pope in history, m...