It’s getting real, folks. On January 13th, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote the newly elected Speaker of the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), that she expected the government to hit the statutory debt limit of $31.381 trillion on January 19th. That doesn’t mean the debt limit will be breached today. Treasury has a few tricks up its sleeve known as “extraordinary measures” that can be used to keep the debt limit in check until summer.

But these measures, such as delaying payments to government pension funds and operating “hand to mouth” as revenues come in (Tax Day is April 17th this year), can only get the government so far. At some point, hopefully, sooner than later, the debt limit will be raised.

That may seem odd for a budget watchdog to say, but the reality is the debt limit applies to money Congress and the President have already agreed to spend, whether through spending packages or mandatory programs like Social Security and Medicare. The debt is the accumulated budget deficits over the years and the interest the nation pays to service that debt. Not paying our country’s creditors would mean defaulting on our debt.

Of course, people default on debt every day. Their credit rating takes a hit, and they have to work to improve that score over the years. But they are not Uncle Sam. A default would send the stock market crashing, roil international markets, and ultimately cost taxpayers dearly. Why? Because the U.S. sells Treasury securities to finance our deficit spending and pays interest on those securities. The U.S. benefits from being the world’s reserve currency and is viewed as a secure investment. Once there is a default, that is all called into question, and it will cost more to sell securities in the future. The country can’t unring that bell. Everyone will know there is a possibility of default in the future. There’s no improving the nation’s “FICO score.”

Over the years, various schemes have been floated to manage the default. Schemes such as prioritizing debt payments and other sacred cow spending, minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin, and depositing it in the Treasury (which Congress granted the Treasury the authority to do in 1997). Don’t pay back the debt that the government owes itself (borrowing from trust funds). This all reveals that the debt limit itself is a kind of gimmick. There, we said it.

It’s worth reviewing how we got here. For the entirety of our country’s history, we have been in debt. In 1835 it dropped to just under $34,000 from $4.76 million the year before, but by 1838 the debt was back over $3.3 million and growing. Up until 1917, Congress told the Executive how much it could spend as it went. Then, with World War I, lawmakers wanted to create more rapid flexibility and essentially created the upper borrowing limit, kind of like a credit card. Since then, lawmakers have routinely increased the debt limit. It wasn’t until the last decade that it became a political pawn. The debt limit was increased three times in the Trump Administration and once already in the Biden Administration.

Dear readers, you know we’re all for getting the nation’s fiscal house in order. Do it by addressing the structural challenges in major entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, reining in defense spending, using priority-setting and evidence-based policy to test programs, cutting corporate welfare, raising adequate revenue for the spending policymakers want, don’t create unnecessary long-term liabilities, confront the vast and growing costs of climate change. But holding a gun to the head of the full faith and credit of the U.S. Treasury is not the way to accomplish that. To “budge” after default will be too late. No. Getting the nation’s fiscal house in order isn’t calling for a cut of some arbitrary level of spending or refusing to authorize an increase in the debt limit. Instead, it is to lay out the policy prescriptions that will be necessary, make a case for them to the American people, hash them out through a public debate, and enact the changes into law. It’s not easy, but it’s the job every lawmaker volunteered for when they ran for office.

There was a time when we believed the debt limit served a purpose. It forced a moment of reflection about how much debt the country and its elected officials had racked up. An opportunity for discussion. It was consistently increased, but just voting on it created that opportunity. Now that it has become a weapon for fiscal terror, it has outlived its usefulness. Lawmakers should raise the debt limit and then eliminate this costly gimmick.