Let’s start with the basics:

The debt ceiling is a fundamentally absurd law. It doesn’t affect how much debt the government INCURS, but merely sets a limit on how much of that debt we PAY.

In recent years the GOP has used the debt limit to use past spending in an attempt to lower future spending. Currently, the Congressional Republicans are threatening to throw the world economy into chaos — creating unimaginably vast human suffering — because they lack the political power to cut government spending.

Analogy time: A farmer incurs debt, and, regretting how much he spent, threatens not to pay his debt. If he follows through on that threat, he loses his farm, and he and his family suffers. Moreover, since the lender’s balance sheet depend on the farmer honoring his debt, the lender’s solvency is put at risk, so our farmer’s default threatens his neighbors, who may no longer be able to get loans from the lender that the farmer reneged on. The entire community is thrown into chaos.

Of course, what happens in the real world is that the farmer and the lender work out a plan to control spending, increase revenue and increase the farmer’s debt limit to make those things possible.

A more sensible approach, of course, is a combination of future spending reductions and/or revenue increases to lower the debt the nation incurs. Instead, the GOP has historically lowered the tax burden of the wealthiest Americans, while avoiding the spending reductions that would anger most Americans, who rely on “safety net” programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In other words, the GOP;’s tax cuts for the wealthy are the cause of the increase in deficit spending (the source ofd the federal debt).

Democrats would like to target defense spending, a variety of tax breaks for the wealthiest persons and corporations — e.g., the financial industry, energy corporations, and giant agricultural businesses, but have often lacked the political nerve to do it.

As it stands, as the economy and population grow, government spending and debt will increase, and just as Americans increase their credit card limits as their income and spending grows, the debt ceiling needs to be increased so that the nation can pay its debts.

In any case, until congressional appropriations and tax policy are brought into line, we will need to increase the debt ceiling to meet our obligations — or lose the farm.