From the Economist:

If Congress fails to act on the debt limit, “America would already be in the throes of extreme fiscal austerity. The government would be unable to borrow more money, meaning it would have to cut spending by the gap between current tax revenues and expenditures—an overnight reduction of roughly 25%, according to analysts at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank. Moody’s Analytics, a research outfit, estimates that in the immediate aftermath of a default, America’s economy would shrink by nearly 1% and its unemployment rate would rise from 3.4% to 5%, putting about 1.5m people out of work. … America would have violated the trust that the world has long placed in it. Questions about alternatives to the dollar and to the American financial system would gain urgency. Faith, once destroyed, cannot easily be restored.”

This situation is brought to you by the Republican Party, whose chief motive here is to embarrass the the Biden administration. This shows us that Republicans are willing to do SERIOUS damage to the United States and our people to gain political advantage.