Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:

What does it mean that the US has hit its borrowing limit?

Well, the US this week hit its statutorily created debt limit, meaning that because of all the money that it borrowed during the course of the pandemic and the fact that it's borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars a year spending more than it takes in tax revenues, it hit its $31.5 trillion debt limit, which means that the US is now in a situation that it cannot issue new debt until Congress acts to raise the debt limit. However, Congress does not want to raise the debt limit, and there are a couple episodes during 2011 and 2013 where Congress came very, very close to the date where it would've potentially defaulted for the first time ever by not making payments to creditors.