The Obama administration has said that the only way for this country to avoid a cash-management crisis that could hit next month is for Congress to raise the “debt ceiling,” which is the statutory limit on how much money the government can borrow. The cap is currently $16.4 trillion.
In other words, that the answer to having borrowed more money than we can pay back is to now borrow even more money. Do we really want to set that kind of example as a country? We don't encourage private citizens to do that, so why should the government. Let's instead focus on paying down what we already owe in some kind of manageable way. Letting the country go into default may be exactly the kind of motivation we need in order to do that and realize that we cannot keep borrowing to spend beyond our means.