The essay notes that the debt ceiling, currently $41.1 trillion with gross debt already past $40 trillion, is expected to be reached between late 2027 and early 2028 and cannot be vetoed, creating a temptation for the incoming Democratic House to condition any increase on caps on Iran-war spending.

It warns that debt-ceiling standoffs have already triggered credit downgrades and raise borrowing costs globally because foreign investors hold $9.29 trillion in Treasuries, so a Democratic use of the tactic would make default risk a bipartisan feature of the system.

The author recommends that Democrats instead help suspend or repeal the ceiling in the lame-duck session, fight the war through ordinary appropriations, and use subpoena power for accountability, arguing that weapons aimed at the White House are preferable to ones that hit the world’s poorest borrowers.

Nobody in Washington is talking about the debt ceiling this week, and that is precisely why it deserves attention. Most of the pre-election chatter about what a Democratic House could do to rein in Donald Trump’s misadventure in Iran revolves around war powers resolutions, subpoenas, and hearings. Not surprisingly, all three run into the same wall, a presidential veto that a new majority will not have the two-thirds votes to override.

There is, however, one lever that no president can veto, and it will land in the lap of the new Congress next year. That lever is the debt ceiling.

The arithmetic is quite simple. Gross federal debt crossed $40 trillion on August 18, while the........

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