you're not being frugal. you're just a deadbeat. right? if you buy a house and you decide man, this month, i would rather go on vacation somewhere, so i'm not going to pay my mortgage, you didn't just save yourself some money. you're just going to get foreclosed on. so you don't save money by not paying your bills. you don't reduce your debt by not paying your bills. all you're doing is making yourself unreliable and hurting your credit rating. and you'll start getting those phone calls and those notices in the mail, and the next time you try to borrow, somebody's going to say huh-uh, because you don't pay your bills, you're a deadbeat. well, the same is true for countries. the only thing that the debt ceiling does is to let the u.s. treasury pay for what congress