It appears that Congress is attempting to sneak in a debt ceiling increase into the defense authorization bill.

Currently, we are expected to hit the legal debt limit sometime before the election. However, in an effort to avoid a potentially embarassing stand-alone vote on the increase, it looks like they will try to slip the debt increase under the cover of another bill.

Of course, this is the direct result of the Congress' inability to adapt a fiscally responsible budget - or any budget at all for that matter. Holding out for yet another round of hundreds of billions in tax cuts for corporations (in the FSC/ETI bill) or for tax breaks for millionaires (such as estate tax) has created one gigantic mountain of a fiscal mess.