What The Debt Ceiling Is and What It Means

The United States has a national debt ceiling, which is the maximum amount of debt that the federal government can have.  When the government reaches the debt ceiling it is no longer allowed to incur any further debt, this results in the government shutting down any non-critical operations.  This shutdown continues until the debt ceiling is raised, or until a portion of the debt is paid off.

The new congress that takes office in January faces a difficult task, do they raise the debt ceiling and continue bankrupting our country or do they not raise the debt ceiling and risk halting government operations.  Either way the new congress will get grief and neither of the two options are good for this country, so it is essentially a no win situation, but by raising the debt ceiling they could ease into a spending reduction,  If they choose to not raise the debt ceiling our country will be forced to control our spending, which is good, but in a more abrupt manner.  On the other hand, if you continue to allow the government to spend more and more money, by increasing the debt ceiling, will you ever be able to put this out of control spending to a stop?

The new congress should be completely up front with the American people.  Tell them that we are looking at a complete economical collapse if we don't do something about our spending and increasing debt quickly.  Inform the American people that things will get worst before they can get better, but in order to start working towards a better tomorrow major cuts must be made.  Many of these cuts will effect our daily lives because entitlement programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security are not immune to some sort of cutbacks.  The American people MUST realize that if we continue going down our current path we will end up like the Soviet Union, collapsed and poor.

No matter what the new congress does regarding the debt ceiling, Americans must realize that they have to make concessions and stop relying on the government if the United States hopes to survive.  None of the choices we have are good ones, but if we all work together our country can achieve great things.

What do you think congress should do, raise or not raise the debt ceiling?