The Debt-Ceiling Charade

When a household credit card limit is about to be exceeded, the household usually gets a 2nd job, attempts to get more overtime hours--anything to bring in more income.  They also undergo cost-cutting activities like eating out at restaurants less, cancelling non-essential expenses like vacations, entertainment, even driving less and turning down the thermometer in the winter.

In other words, when household budgets are squeezed, they attempt to bring in more income and simultaneously, reduce and cut expenses.

However, when the US government is about to reach its debt ceiling, what does Congress do?  It merely increases the ceiling amount, so the government can continue its overspending ways, and then relies on the Fed and US Treasury to print more currency to enable that spending.  Only with Congress, you get the usual chicanery of a fiscal tug of war that is nothing more than theater. 

http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2011-04-26.asp