一起了解美国债务史

ROBERT SIEGEL, host: The United States hit its debt limit today. That means the government owes $14.3 trillion, and it cannot legally borrow a dime more.
This makes life very complicated for the Treasury Department. It now needs to shuffle money around to pay the bills. Meanwhile, Congress is locked in a fight over how to raise the limit.

But Robert Smith of our Planet Money team reports that the whole idea of a debt limit was meant to make things easier.

ROBERT SMITH: One hundred years ago, it all seemed so straightforward.

Mr. DON RITCHIE (Senate Historian): Congress appropriates all monies.

SMITH: Don Ritchie, the Senate historian, says when Congress wanted to spend, it spent. And if it needed to borrow, it approved the sale of a bunch of Treasury bonds.

Mr. RITCHIE: They were thinking ahead as to what monies would be needed.

SMITH: Susan Irving from the Government Accountability Office says in the old days, Congress would consider each new piece of debt individually.

Ms. SUSAN IRVING (Government Accountability Office): And they would literally approve the form of the security what the duration was going to be.

SMITH: So this could take all day long. You could say bridges, post offices, a canal through Panama.

Ms. IRVING: So much for shoeing the horses for the Department of X, I mean, really.

SMITH: Congressmen earned their salaries back in those days. But with the start of World War I, such due diligence became way too complex.

Ms. IRVING: You think about the number of decisions that go on during a war. You know, suddenly, if they're going to have to approve every single one, you're coming in sort of constantly. Oh, now we have to borrow up to so much to build up more tanks.

SMITH: So the wartime Congress said enough, and it delegated the hard part. Hey, Treasury Department, they said, you borrow whatever you have to in order to cover our spending, OK? But Don Ritchie says that Congress was wary about giving too much power over to the Treasury.

Mr. RITCHIE: They knew they had to do it. There was an urgency to it. But one way to control it of course was to say you have a cap, there's -you just can't go beyond that limit.

SMITH: So in 1917, Congress came up with the first real debt ceiling, not because debt was necessarily a bad thing but because they wanted to make their lives simpler without giving up too much control, kind of like putting a toddler on a leash.

In fact, over the next 90 years, the debt limit did little to control the growing debt. Congress spent more and more, that toddler grew into a giant, and Congress just ordered longer and longer leashes every couple of years.

But there's always a lot of drama. Congress argues back and forth on the debt limit, and the Treasury tries every trick it can to keep the U.S. from running out of cash.

Ms. IRVING: You see the daily Treasury statement. You see the buildup of a cash balance. You see Treasury doing constant forecasting.

SMITH: And that's where we are now. The government has about 11 weeks to get this settled. In the meantime, the Treasury department is starting to dip into the retirement accounts of government workers, giving them IOUs to free up a little more cash to keep the government running.

This kind of move has also happened before, but the difference this time is that the U.S. borrows so much now that there's no wiggle room. If Congress hasn't raised the debt ceiling by August 2nd, government payments will have to be slashed by 40 percent. Whether it's military salaries, Social Security payments or Medicare, a lot of people are not going to get paid.