Uncle sam seems to be facing a financial crisis. He's running out of money, and needs to borrow, problem is, he is already pretty deep in debt, and there is a constitutional limit on how much he can borrow, and has reached that limit. The Obama government, has approached the US congress to vote in favor of rising the debt ceiling, so it can borrow more, but the opposition party, isn't very much in favor of this, with little regard for the consequences. So we have on our hands a raging debate, heck an all out war going on in the country currently between the two parties of the country, i.e the democrats and the republicans. It's explained in a nutshell here
