Somewhere around June 1 — no one knows exactly when — the Treasury Department will run out of accounting gimmicks and our nation will exceed its $31.4 trillion debt limit. At that point, we’ll be unable to pay our bills, and we’ll be at risk of defaulting. Unless Congress can come to an agreement with Joe Biden on once again raising that debt ceiling.

As we’ve noted previously, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been engaged in debt ceiling non-negotiations with our woefully unpopular president, who’s been insisting on a “clean” bill that simply raises the debt ceiling and essentially gives him the thumbs up to keep spending us into oblivion.

That’s not the role of Congress, though, and McCarthy seems to know this. Which is why he and his fellow House Republicans passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023, which proposes to raise the borrowing limit in exchange for capping the nation’s annual growth in discretionary spending at 1% a year. It’s hardly an unworkable ask, given that it amounts to around $3.2 trillion in savings during a decade in which we’re projected to spend more than $60 trillion.

And yet Biden and his fellow spendthrift Democrats are still resisting — so much so that they’ve been floating the heretofore wacky idea that Section 4 of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment gives the president permission to keep borrowing and spending as usual even after the debt limit has been surpassed.

In fact, though, the debt limit can only be raised by Congress. As columnist Rich Lowry notes:

The debt limit is not some innovation dreamed up by the House Freedom Caucus. It was first passed in 1917 as part of the Second Liberty Bond Act. This was hardly a congressional power grab. Before the advent of the debt limit, as Georgetown law professor Anita S. Krishnakumar points out, Congress authorized each bond issue, generally to fight wars and bolster the economy during recessions. The debt limit is the logical extension of Congress’ power to tax and spend.

Think about it: Which branch of government has always been understood to have “the power of the purse”? Yep, Congress. And Congress — specifically the House of Representatives — is controlled by the GOP.

Perhaps sensing that he doesn’t hold a terribly strong hand — at least not as strong as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had in their debt-ceiling standoffs against House Republicans — Biden finally hosted Speaker McCarthy, along with House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at the White House.

“After the hourlong discussion in the Oval Office,” the AP reports, “Biden said he was ‘absolutely certain’ that the country could avert a default, declaring that failure to meet America’s obligations ‘is not an option.’”

Biden now says he’s open to discussion about how to reduce the federal deficit. His budget plan would trim deficits by nearly $3 trillion over a decade, mainly through — shocker here — taxing “the rich” and getting them to “pay their fair share.” (Spoiler alert: They already do.)

Biden and McCarthy have agreed to meet again this week, until which time they’ll continue to harrumph and position and posture. “We both said default is not an option,” said McCarthy, “but only one of us took action.”

He’s right. And he’s also right that some spending restraint is needed. By coming to the table with a reasonable offer and forcing Biden to meet, McCarthy has quietly taken control of the debate. Now let’s see if he can finish. As the Wall Street Journal’s editors warn: “Interest on the national debt rose 40%, or $107 billion, and is already $374 billion for the first seven months. That’s what happens when interest rates rise 500 basis points in a year to fight the inflation that runaway federal spending helped to ignite.”

They’re right, and they’re also right when they point out the obvious: “There is no good reason other than political malpractice for the U.S. to default on its debt. Plenty of revenue is flowing in to pay interest on the debt. The main obstacle to a debt-ceiling increase now is the Democrats in the Senate and White House who are defaulting on the jobs they were elected to do.”

Under Joe Biden, the national debt has soared by a whopping $6 trillion in just the past two years. Yet he had the nerve to tell his friendly MSNBC interviewer this past weekend, “The debt is not a debt that I accumulated.”

It’s long past time to put a spending muzzle on him.

Postscript: In a savvy bit of media manipulation, Joe Biden’s handlers prepped him and pushed him in front of the cameras yesterday during the latter part of the networks’ 6 p.m. news hour. Thus, he was able to present his unopposed argument about the debt-ceiling negotiations and run out the clock on any opposing viewpoint.