WASHINGTON — If the prediction markets are to be believed, the United States Treasury will set fresh records in red ink before 2029 arrives. Kalshi's exchange, tallying some $43,000 in daily volume, places the probability at a towering 98% — a figure that leaves precious little room for fiscal optimism. The dispatch from the ledger books is, in a word, settled.

The stakes are not trivial. The national debt already exceeds $34 trillion, a sum that would have confounded even the most extravagant imagination of prior generations. Market consensus holds that the twin pressures of mandatory spending and tax policy — whatever their ultimate shape — make a new debt ceiling virtually inevitable. At 98%, the prediction boards are not hedging; they are pronouncing.