How to make a government shutdown impossible

By a matter of minutes, the federal government averted yet another shutdown. Fingers are again being pointed to determine what went wrong. No doubt political polarization, a dysfunctional Congress and meddling by President-elect Trump and Elon Musk are causes.

But the bigger problem is that the budget process is broken and needs a complete overall. American history may be a story of budget fixes that failed, but something needs to be done.

The starting point is repealing the 1917 act that created the debt ceiling...