U.S. President Joe Biden has signed a bill into law, temporarily lifting the government's borrowing limit to $28.9 trillion and pushing off the debt default deadline to December 3. The deadlock over the debt crisis has been broken, but if Congress fails to reach an agreement on the next fiscal year's budget and borrowing limit by December 3, the U.S. government will face a shutdown and debt debacle.

The debt limit is the total amount of money the U.S. government is authorized to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations. However, it has become a bargaining tool of partisanship. Every few years, the two main parties in the country engage in such a farce, and neither of them wants to become the one who lights the "bomb fuse."

Since 2013, the U.S. Congress has suspended the debt ceiling seven times. Republicans and Democrats, for their own interests, often play Russian roulette with the debt limit before the deadline. They are betting that the "bullet of debt debacle" will not be shot during their office term.

As of early September, U.S. government debt exceeded $28.7 trillion, thanks to the "joint effort" made by both the parties during these years. But when it comes to footing the bill, none of them seem to have a heart.

During the Trump administration, Republicans pushed hard to raise the debt ceiling or suspend it, but faced strong resistance from the Democrats. Now that Biden is in power, the Democrats have repeatedly proposed suspending the debt ceiling, but the Republicans have refused to offer support. In fact, it's the unrestrained borrowing of both sides that has caused the "debt snowball" to grow bigger and bigger, far beyond the government's ability to repay. As the debt default looms, both sides only want to find expedient measures instead of addressing the underlying problem.

White House economists have warned that a debt default would be devastating and would have a long-term negative impact on U.S. households, businesses and investors, in addition to threatening Americans' paychecks, welfare benefits, military security, the National Weather Service and even the maintenance of the U.S. power grid.

Although the two sides have reached a brief truce, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell wrote a letter to Biden indicating that the Republicans would not help the Democrats raise the debt ceiling again in the future. As a result, the Democrats can only use the budget reconciliation process to solve the problem on their own. Yet, the problem of U.S. debt needs bipartisan efforts.

Although the two parties have reached an agreement before the deadline for debt default in the past few years, the repeated debt ceiling crises have revealed that U.S. partisanship is costing American national interests, overdrawing the credibility of the country and pushing "Uncle Sam" to the "abyss of debt crisis."

Credits: 

 Scriptwriters & editors: Wei Wei, Yuan Xin

 Illustrator: Cao Yi

Senior producer: Wei Wei 

Managing director: Mei Yan

(To submit cartoons and share story ideas or feedback on our cartoon page, please contact us at cartoon_opinions@cgtn.com)