President Trump is right. We should junk the debt limit.

The Congressional Budget Office announced this week that the U.S. government will run out of money in July or August unless Congress raises the debt limit, which puts a ceiling on what Uncle Sam can borrow.

Congress should have raised the limit at the beginning of this year but didn't. Since then, Washington has been using cash reserves and so-called emergency measures to pay its bills. Delaying taxpayer refunds is one possible ploy, and playing around with the civil service pension funds is another.

Revenues surge in March and April, thanks to corporate and personal income tax deadlines. A smaller bump comes in June when quarterly tax payments are due.

But not long after, the till runs out.

If the debt ceiling is not raised by then, the U.S., for the first time in its history, could default on its debts, either by missing interest payments or not redeeming maturing bonds. If that actually happened, shock waves would hit financial markets around the world. We came close to that in 2011. Faith in the dollar would be damaged and its value would go down, a sure-fire formula for future inflation.

Interest rates on bonds would go up.

The debt limit has been around since World War I. Defenders say it’s a crucial tool to stop even more spending.

Well, we painfully see today how well that has worked in forcing fiscal prudence.

Raising the ceiling is often preceded by lots of drama—social security benefits and payments for Medicare and Medicaid will be in danger are routine cries—as a deadline approaches. Resolving the crisis then requires deals with various congressional members to get the job done. In fact, too many times the process has ended up generating even more spending.

President Trump was right last December when he called for dropping the debt limit altogether.

Fiscal sanity won't come from what is a charade. So let's stop the pretense and focus on real measures to get our financial house in order.

Productive policies would include cutting tax rates; cutting unnecessary spending; rooting out waste, fraud and abuse; pursuing deep deregulation and generating more revenue from expanding energy production. Hmm! Does all this sound familiar?

Another necessity is forcing the Federal Reserve to focus on stabilizing the value of the dollar rather than suppressing economic activity.

For now, congressional Republicans seem likely to include a big boost in the debt limit in its upcoming tax cut legislation.

After that, let's retire the debt-limit show to the Smithsonian.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​