Stephen Mihm, Columnist

When Debt-Ceiling Politics Was Bipartisan

President Barack Obama should take some solace from the fact that heâs hardly the first president forced to play debt-ceiling politics.

October 14, 2013 at 3:57 PM UTC

By Stephen Mihm

Stephen Mihm, a professor of history at the University of Georgia, is coauthor of “Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance.”

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President Barack Obama is hardly the first president forced to play debt-ceiling politics.

The debt ceiling is a cap on the amount of total debt the U.S. government can incur to pay the country's bills. Before the 20th century, there was no ceiling on the total amount of debt. Instead, Congress set limits on the amount of debt the Treasury could borrow for discrete purposes: a war or a public-works project. Congress also set limits on the kinds of debt the Treasury could issue for any given purpose (for example, short-term borrowing versus long-term bonds).