The idea sounds prudent enough: limit the amount the federal government can borrow and you limit its ability to overspend. But this, like many Washington contraptions, is a mirage. The debt ceiling, as it currently functions, is not a tool of restraint. It is a lever of dysfunction, a mechanism that paradoxically leads to more spending, higher deficits, and greater economic instability. It is a relic that should be scrapped entirely. This might surprise even some conservatives. Elon Musk, no stranger to fiscal rigor, recently argued against raising the debt ceiling in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. His instinct is...