Over the coming weeks, Washington will be consumed with the arcane issue of the nation's debt ceiling. Not with the practical matter of whether lawmakers should raise the nation's credit limit, but with the political advantage that can be gained in this game of trillion-dollar chicken.

A deadline focuses the attention, and the deadline for raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling either (a) has arrived or (b) will soon. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that the nation bumped the ceiling Monday but that he'd be able to borrow enough from federal employee retirement funds to keep the government working until Aug. 2. If Congress hasn't acted by then, the United States won't be able to pay all of its bills.

Nobody knows precisely what that might mean, though most expect the results would be a mess, including in the world's financial markets. Neither the bond nor the stock market takes kindly to uncertainty, or to a major nation threatening to default on its obligations.

The question of raising the debt ceiling, like every other fiscal issue in Washington, gets wound around the politics of spending cuts and taxes.

House Speaker John Boehner has said the administration must cut spending by the same amount the debt ceiling is raised. He categorically rejected any tax increase, preferring instead to balance the budget entirely with spending reductions.

"I'm ready to cut the deal today," he said over the weekend. "We don't have to wait until the 11th hour. But I am not going to walk away from this moment. We have a moment, a window of opportunity to act, because if we don't act, the markets are going to act for us."

Democrats, lead by the president, have proposed increased taxes and smaller cuts in spending, which is how Washington describes a modest reduction in spending growth.

Neither approach is likely to do more than temporarily postpone the day of financial reckoning.

Any path to lasting solvency must involve both real spending cuts and real changes to the tax code - including increases in the amount some Americans pay. It was the message U.S. Sen. Mark Warner brought to Norfolk this week, in a speech before the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce.

Warner is part of a bipartisan Gang of Six that for months has been trying to come up with a plan. This week, the gang's most conservative member, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, abandoned the effort in frustration, saying an agreement was impossible.

He criticized - rightfully - the Senate's Democratic leadership for its inaction in the face of a mounting crisis (see the op-ed page). He leaves the other five senators to soldier on, but the message is clear: Politics - even in a group founded to be bipartisan - is the enemy of compromise.

Warner, who has been sounding constant notes of fiscal alarm, has also rejected the all-or-nothing politics that dominates Washington. During his speech at the chamber, he focused on the fact that a solution will require everyone to sacrifice: those who pay for government, and those who receive its benefits.

Nevertheless, or perhaps because of that, the gang is being criticized by everyone from anti-tax purists to activists for the aging.

"The fact that it will be attacked both from the left and the right, I think, gives validation to a lot of people who say, 'Well, maybe it's in the right spot,' " Warner said. "There's going to have to be at some point a willingness of Congress and others to kind of link arms and say, 'OK, we're going to take these hits and move forward.' "

That would require the kind of political courage that has been in precious short supply in Washington. But if Congress doesn't do something to get the nation's deficit and debt under control now, it will have to go through this process again in a few months while facing financial chaos.