Something I don’t understand about the debt limit… why are we talking about defaulting on debt? It seems that if we hit the limit, the federal government has to stop spending money, but they could keep paying off existing debt with new debt, no?

The government would have to not pay something that it's supposed to pay, given that expenses > income and the total amount of debt wouldn't be allowed to increase. It could default on other bills, though...

Yeah. Not saying that’s at all a good thing, but… avoids the worst constitutional crisis?