Quick Quiz: Do you really understand the debt ceiling?

OK, here's the question: If Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, will this keep the U.S. from spending more money?

If you said "no," then pat yourself on the back. There's a good chance you just might understand something that most Americans don't.

Regardless of whether you think the USA should spend less, the debt ceiling vote isn't about spending money. Congress has already authorized the spending in bills passed months ago. The debt ceiling vote is about paying those bills.

Why should retired teachers care about this vote? To begin, Republicans will threaten to withhold support for raising the debt ceiling unless there are big cuts in: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Got your attention now?

I know, Social Security has not one damn thing to do with the deficit. It's fully funded by its own FICA payroll tax and--in fact--it runs a surplus. I'm sure that there are a whole lot of Republican Social Security recipients who won't like seeing their cost-of-living increases reduced. Go figure!

Of course, very little makes sense when it comes to Congress, an organization which actually has a lower public opinion rating than cockroaches.

Another reason retired teachers should care about the debt ceiling vote is what refusing to raise the ceiling will do to our economy. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post is my favorite "policy wonk." Here's part of his description of what happens if we default on our debts: "Imagine we hit the debt ceiling Feb. 15. ... federal spending over the next month will be about $450 billion. Federal revenues will be nearer to $277 billion. That means that the government will have to default on about 40 percent of its obligations."

"The choices it will face quickly become stark. It can cover interest on the debt, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense spending, education, food stamps and other low-income transfers, and a handful of other programs, but doing all that will mean defaulting on everything — really, everything — else. The FBI will shut down. The people responsible for tracking down loose nukes will lose their jobs. The prisons won’t operate. The biomedical researchers won’t be funded. The court system will close its doors. The tax refunds won’t go out. The Federal Aviation Administration will go offline. The parks will close. Food safety inspections will cease."

"Then, of course, there’s the financial-market chaos. Trillions of dollars in derivatives and other financial products are based on the interest rate that the federal government pays when borrowing. U.S. government debt is, after all, supposed to be the safest investment in the world, and so it’s used to “benchmark” all other sorts of debt. A spike in the Treasury rate would mean a spike in credit card rates and mortgage rates, not to mention all manner of more esoteric financial derivatives. The damage to the economy would be tremendous, and it would occur at every level, from individuals looking for a loan to buy a house to hedge funders trying to play the markets."

And the crazy thing is that this is all self-inflicted. Walter Dellinger, Bill Clinton's solicitor general nails the absurdity of it all in an email to Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: "I understand why the debt ceiling is a problem. What I don’t understand it why it’s Obama’s problem. The debts that will come due are the debts of the United States, not the debts of the Obama family and not even the debts of the executive branch…"

"If the U.S. defaults on loan obligations because of failure to increase the debt ceiling, every single American would be made somewhat poorer by the dead weight loss to the American economy that this would cause. I don’t see why either political party or either branch of government should gain any leverage by threatening economic harm to the United States of America whose financial management is the mutual responsibility of each of them."

"The whole thing reminds me of the great moment in “Blazing Saddles” when Sheriff Bart takes himself hostage by pointing a gun at his own head. The simple townsfolk of Rock Ridge were dumb enough to fall for it. Are we?"

Sargent concludes: "Yes, apparently we are. You can read through reams of reporting about the debt ceiling and not find anything that explains the most basic facts about the situation. It is widely being reported on as a conventional Washington standoff, in which Dems want a debt ceiling hike, Republicans want spending cuts, and we’re now going to see a game of chicken in which the two will meet somewhere in the middle. This bears no relationship to the reality of the situation, in which Republicans are pretending that in refusing to hike the debt ceiling, they are withholding a concession for which they should ultimately be rewarded. In reality they are demanding that Dems give them something in exchange for agreeing not to do immense damage to the whole country. As Dellinger’s email neatly demonstrates, the situation is profoundly absurd and unbalanced — yet this is completely lost in the business-as-usual coverage."

Stay tuned, you have a real stake in the outcome of this absurd drama.