Do We Limit Not Buying, But Paying Bills?

A quick thought on the economy before heading for bed:

I never did understand the bit about raising the debt ceiling not being for new debt, but it rather being simply to pay the bills on money already spent. Seems if you have a debt ceiling, it should be on spending, not on your ability to pay for the spending. Did we, then, in fact, break the debt ceiling? Did we break our own law not to go above $14.3 trillion? True, I must be wrong on this. Either the ceiling prevents us not from buying such-and-such amount, but for paying off the bills when they reach such-and-such amount, or I got ill information when I heard the deficit had to be raised just to pay for existing expenditures. Otherwise, surely there would have been an outcry. . . .

But, if this is what did happen and there wasn't an outcry . . . amazing!

I will say this: Supposing the ceiling is on the paying the bills, and it doesn't specifically and in writing restrict us from running up bills at all, as long as we don't pay them. I say that still implies you should not be spending the money. If a father gave his son access to the family credit card, wouldn't he be a fool to say, "Okay, son, I can only afford to pay off  $14.3 thousand dollars, but you are welcome to use the card beyond that. Go as high as you like."

Did we really do that? Did we create a law limiting how much we allow ourselves to pay for, but not limiting how much we can actually buy?

If we did this, we are sooo foolish. I think I must have got wrong information when I read raising the ceiling was to pay for existing bills. This simply cannot be true, for I cannot believe we would have such an unwise debt ceiling.