And it’s about to get worse:

Spending, taxes, and borrowing authority are all set by law. In roughly two weeks, the national debt will hit a limit, and at that point the Administration will be forced to break the law, either spending less than the law requires or borrowing or taxing more than it permits.

The situation is ridiculous and other countries don’t have such mutually contradictory budget laws that make it literally impossible for the government not to break one or more of them. Denmark is the only other developed country with a debt limit at all, but the limit is set so high there’s no chance it will be reached.

For more on this nonsense, see this article by the Brookings Institution’s Henry J. Aaron in Sunday’s New York Times.

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