To say that the president has “reduced the deficit” by 2 trillion is a stretch. At best, he has reduced the projected ten year deficit by that much. The annual deficits remain dangerously large, and the projected annual deficits are reduced only from their previous projections. The current projections for later-year deficits remain larger than the current projections for the 2013 deficit, and larger than the actual deficit for 2012 or 2011.

IF the Republicans refuse to play ball and increase the debt limit, the result need not be “default”, in the sense that interest and principle payments on federal debt would not be made on time. In fact, the constitution requires that these payments be made, no matter what. The president would be duty bound to prioritize those payments. Every other federal expenditure would be on the chopping block. NASA might have to stop recording data from the Mars rovers. Wildfires might have to be left to burn, and people left to get out on their own. Social security checks wouldn’t arrive. Light and power might go off in VA hospitals. Tanks might go without gasoline on the battlefield. There is no end to the folly that might be obligatory. But the debt, itself, would be paid, and the US would not default.

Not for now. Sooner or later, taxes will have to be raised to cover spending, or spending cut to match tax receipts, or some mix of these two. There are soft limits to how much debt we can assume, and these soft limits are not within the power of Congress to raise at the stroke of a pen.

The quantity needed to cover current and projected spending is staggering. With no cuts to spending, taxes would have to rise by about sixty percent.