Someday Congress Won't Raise the Debt Ceiling

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has asked Congress to raise the federal debt limit above the ceiling imposed by legislators two years ago. According to a recent survey, only a small fraction of the American people -- both Democrats and Republicans -- support an increase. In contrast, a 2013 survey found that the vast majority of economists would like to scrap the debt ceiling. Who’s right? There is an important sense in which they both are -- and that means that the U.S. is likely to face some wrenching political conflicts in the next decade.

Here’s how I interpret what the economists were saying: Congress has the power to make tax and spending decisions. Those decisions typically result in a budget deficit, meaning that the government has to take on a growing amount of debt. But there’s no need to have a separate law to cap the size of the debt: If Congress doesn’t want to it to keep growing, it just needs to spend less, tax more or some combination of the two.