Last month, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner estimated that Congress would crash through the current $14.3 trillion debt ceiling sometime between March 31 and May 16. He has now pushed back those dates: The most recent estimate is sometime between April 15 and May 31.

This announcement is likely to renew the debate over raising the debt ceiling. In this piece in the Washington Times, my colleague Jason Fichtner and I argue for prioritizing spending before resorting to raising the debt ceiling. This is how it would work:

The most recent Office of Management and Budget data shows federal revenues will reach $2.17 trillion this fiscal year. Interest payments on the nation’s debt are estimated to be $205 billion this year, or about 10 percent of revenues. Taking that payment off the top, as Mr. Toomey’s plan would, leaves $1.9 trillion for Congress to spend. That’s enough to pay for Social Security ($741 billion), Medicare ($488 billion), and Medicaid ($276 billion), with $395 billion left for other programs.

In spite of the title of the piece (which we didn’t choose), “Don’t Raise the Debt Ceiling,” the idea here isn’t to argue that Congress should never raise the debt ceiling (though that would be my preference), but rather to explain that it just isn’t true that the government will automatically default if the debt ceiling isn’t raised or that the government will immediately shut down if the debt ceiling is reached. There are many options for keeping the government running past that point — at least for a while, if Congress doesn’t change its spending habits, and longer if it does.

The main concern that people seem to have about not raising the debt ceiling is its impact on interest rates. I commented about that here. Basically, I agree that not raising the debt ceiling might impact our interest rates, but raising the debt ceiling — and failing to seriously address entitlement spending and spending in general — would, too. These consequences are systematically ignored by the raise-the-debt-ceiling-no-matter what side.

The whole piece is here. Reason TV has a video on the same issue this morning.