Politicians have made many claims about the debt ceiling. Here are nine myths you may have heard:

Myth #1: Without raising the debt ceiling, the United States will default on its debt.
The United States will have $307 billion in bills due in August and about $172 billion in revenue. The interest on the debt in August will be about $29 billion. The United States will have more than enough money, therefore, to pay its debts. Since not paying debts would have catastrophic global consequences, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will make sure that these bills are paid first.

Myth #2: We can avoid raising the debt ceiling without serious consequences for the economy.
If the debt ceiling is not raised, the federal treasury will be short about $135 billion in August. This means that there are a lot of people who expect to get paid in August who will not get paid. These could be companies who have sold supplies to the military, government workers (including active-duty troops), doctors who serviced Medicare patients, and those on unemployment or Social Security, for example.
Besides the personal hardships for those who would be expecting those checks to arrive, it would be taking $135 billion out of the economy at a time when unemployment is high. The effect would be a worsening of an already weak economy.

Myth #3: A debt ceiling is necessary.
Most nations do not have a debt ceiling. Congress makes the federal budget. It decides how much debt the country will take on when it passes the budget. Congress then imposes a debt ceiling on top of that.

Imagine you borrowed $30,000 to buy a car. Then, after the purchase, you decide that you are going to take on no more than $20,000 of debt. Well, you already decided that you would have $30,000 of debt when you bought the car. So, you have two choices. You can raise your self-imposed debt ceiling, or you can default on your car payments.
This is, essentially, what Congress has done. Congress can default on some payments that it already committed itself to make, or it can raise its self-imposed debt ceiling.

Myth #4: If we just raised the debt ceiling, without any plan to reduce deficits, there would be no effect on the nation’s credit rating.
The “Big Three” credit rating agencies, Moody’s, S&P, and Finch, have said that if the debt ceiling is not raised, the nation’s credit rating could be downgraded. That is not, however, all that they said.

The nation is currently on a fiscally unsustainable course. The costs of three government programs, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, are rising so rapidly that they threaten to bankrupt the country. If this were to happen, the United States might genuinely find itself in a situation like Greece where it cannot pay its creditors.

For this reason, the credit ratings agencies have warned that if Congress and the president do not also make changes that would put the nation on a path toward fiscal sustainability, they might downgrade the nation’s credit rating. A debt ceiling increase without a significant deficit reduction package could, therefore, also lead to a credit rating downgrade.

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Napp Nazworth is a freelance writer, researcher, policy analyst, and blogger living in Parkersburg, WV. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Florida (where he served in Young Life with Carmen Fowler, Executive Editor of The Layman)