Uh... please explain to me how increasing the debt limit is NOT check kiting, but this is...?
(I’ll help you - you can’t. They’re both forms of check kiting except at the end of the day my form results in no net increase to debt and yours does.)
If I have a $10,000 limit on my Mastercard and no money and I need to pay the Visa bill and I write a check on the Mastercard account for $500 to cover my monthly Visa bill I'm kiting a check. I have written a check that is bogus. It will bounce.
If I call Mastercard and ask them to raise my credit limit and they raise it to $12,000 and I write the same $500 check it is not bogus. It will not bounce. There is some potential for me to make everyone whole in the end.
Many of us have gotten into hard times and used credit to pay credit. We've felt horrible about it, but we've pulled it off - payed our bills, payed down the principle, gotten out of trouble and not ruined our credit ratings.
As a family we would always take that option over default / bankruptcy, and so should the USA.