Why does debt ceiling emotion doom spending logic?

Conservatives are doomed because we use logic to fight an emotional battle. A case in point is the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling limit should never have been raised. The emotional weapon used to justify raising the debt ceiling limit was that failure to do so would mean America would default on its financial obligations. No American wants this failure on their conscience. Default is a bad thing. Everyone knows that. However, if everyone knew what default actually means, then everyone would know that America would not default even if the debt ceiling was not raised. However, most Americans have succumbed to the emotional appeal of the notion that default and the debt ceiling are intertwined. Not true. And now for the logical explanation.

America does not default on its financial obligations as long as it pays the interest on the money it borrows. The government collects approximately $100 billion per month. Its interest payments are $20 billion. The government can easily pay the interest on the loans, ergo no default, and still have $80 billion to spend on essential government activities. But there is the rub. The government wishes to spend more than $80 billion, ergo it needs to borrow more money ergo, it needs to raised the debt ceiling. Failure to raise the debt ceiling does not translate into default  on America's debt obligations, it does translate however, into hyper-bloated spending creating additional financial obligations. With the current debt ceiling, the government would have to live on $80 billion per month, which would require congress and the white house to make rational choices, based on genuine priorities with limited funds, on spending, like its citizens must do.  It would be a novel approach.

I personally liked the idea of congressional voting on each essential government activity. It provided transparency where none existed. Under this situation, the concept that we might wind up with a government that only provides essential government activities seems reasonable to me.  The logic of this approach only appeals to a thinking person and is doomed to fail compared with the emotional appeal of a headline.

The underlying problem is that we all have emotions, but only some of us have logic.