Debt Ceiling

I love how every time they increase the debt ceiling, it is always under the auspices of an emergency, to “keep things going for now, until we can get our arms around a solution.” The spendtrhifts in washington never see an increase in the debt ceiling as a reason to cut back, however. Suddenly, they have more money to “spend” and they spend it, crossing their fingers that in 5 years when they have maxed out the country’s credit cards yet again, and they have to raise the debt ceiling one more time, that we’ll have either forgotten the last “emegency” or we won’t be paying attention.
Since when is it good fiscal policy to fix deficit problems by raising your credit card maximum? How does that compute to a group of people that are advertised as being our superiors, and emminently smarter than us flyover idiots?