The coming debt ceiling debate should frustrate us all. Here is the picture I created the last time we dealt with an oncoming debt ceiling issue. It tells the story as well as any projections I could make right now.

The green line represents the debt limit and the blue line is the debt level at the year end. Every time the debt ceiling is raised we end up hurtling towards that limit once again. Whatever conditions are placed on the increase in the debt ceiling this time it seems likely we will end up approaching it yet again.

We need a more fundamental overhaul in fiscal policy if we are going to get the budget back closer to balance, and at this point, closer to balance may be the best we will see for a long time.

This work by Flynnglis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International