The United States debt limit is a legislative limit on the overall debt the US government can incur. As the US keeps running budget deficits, the debt keeps increasing. Congress could deal with this permanently by either repealing the debt limit, or increasing it to a very large number.
But instead, Congress has only increased the debt limit enough to give grace for a year or two before it needs to be increased again. The last time the debt limit was increased was December 2021.
The US hit the debt limit on January 19 this year. The Treasury has been taking extraordinary measures to delay a default, but these measures could fail as early as June 1. While the US has never defaulted, there were debt limit crises in 2011 and 2013.
