This week's government shutdown could be just a warmup for an even bigger budget battle in a couple of weeks.
Congress has to raise the limit on the amount of money the federal government is allowed to borrow by Oct. 17. If the debt ceiling is not raised on time, President Obama warns that Washington won't be able to keep paying its bills.
"It'd be far more dangerous than a government shutdown, as bad as a shutdown is," Obama said Tuesday. "It would be an economic shutdown."
No one is exactly sure what would happen if the government suddenly had to make do without a credit card. But experts agree that the fallout could be scary and far-reaching.
While government shutdowns are messy and disruptive, the country has lived through them before. The U.S. government, on the other hand, has never had to go cold turkey on borrowed money.
If Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, the government has to get by with just the amount of cash that comes in every day.
Former Republican budget staffer Steve Bell has been trying to imagine what that would look like. "The Treasury has to wait all day for money to come in and see how much money they have and see how much they can pay," he says. "It's kind of a stunning thing because any business that ran that way would be bankrupt."
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