For many years, raising or adjusting the debt limit was a pro forma congressional function
AT SOME POINT in October—precisely when is uncertain—America’s federal government will be unable to pay its bills, and may default on its debt. That is not because the country is in a financial crisis or starved of revenue. It is instead due to a toxic combination of America’s dysfunctionally polarised politics and a legal quirk known as the debt ceiling.
. Since 1960, it has done so 78 times: 49 times under Republican presidents, and 29 times when a Democrat was in the White House. During Donald Trump’s presidency, a bipartisan congressional majority raised the ceiling three times, and Democrats agreed to a two-year suspension of the ceiling as part of a budget agreement in 2019.
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