With striking simplicity, WaPo's Jonathan Capehart explains the whole debt ceiling thing:
[N]ot raising [the ceiling] is not the equivalent of cutting spending. Failure to raise the debt ceiling would turn the United States into a deadbeat. That’s because the money gained from raising it is needed to pay $16.7 trillion in bills racked up by Washington since the beginning of the republic.
So why, then, does he follow that with this?
That the electorate doesn’t understand the complexities of the debt ceiling isn’t surprising.
Jonathan, you just explained it in three short sentences which even a registered Republican could understand. So just what are these mysterious "complexities" eluding the lay public?
No, quantitative easing and exotic Dodd-Frankian language and perhaps healthcare cost curves are public-policy areas of understandable incomprehension. But the debt ceiling? Simply paying our bills? Come on, Jonathan, don't pander to uncivic ignorance.