The next fiscal cliff

The fiscal cliff has been averted…for now. But with Washington locked in a state of perpetual crisis, we need only wait for two months until the Treasury Department begins its annual ritual to get the authority to borrow more money. The debt limit is a self-imposed cap on how much the government can borrow, but the government itself has created a set of conditions where the debt limit will a) always be exceeded and b) has become a point of political conjecture by both parties, turning a fiscal exercise into an annual ritual of political gridlock and grandstanding.