Today marks a crit­i­cal day in the bat­tle over the 2011 budget…the fis­cal year we’re already halfway through. Though the fed­eral gov­ern­ment has been kept alive via a series of Con­tin­u­ing Res­o­lu­tions, this Fri­day will be the end of the easy stuff. At the end of the day on Fri­day, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment will hit the debt ceil­ing of $14.294 tril­lion (about $46,000 for each res­i­dent of the US). With­out an increase in that debt ceil­ing, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment will be forced to choose between two options:

  1. Default on the debt
  2. Shut down major por­tions of the government

I’ll dis­cuss both of these shortly, but first…why is today the dead­line when we are still sol­vent until Fri­day? (more…)