White House Council of Economic Ad visers Chairman Austan Goolsbee is warning of cataclysmic results if the new Republican House majority holds back on raising the nation’s debt limit.

“I don’t see why anybody’s playing chicken with the debt ceiling,” he says. “If we get to the point where we damage the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.”

Blah, blah, blah.

Or, taken another way, a collapse is coming — but what kind of collapse?

Not raising the debt ceiling could cause a default. But so, eventually, will trillions in new borrowing every year.

The national debt today sits at $13.9 trillion and could hit the $14.3 trillion ceiling — approved just last February — as early as this summer.

The GOP insists on serious spending cuts before the ceiling is raised again.

Which is exactly right.

As the November elections proved, no issue unites Republicans, Tea Party activists and ordinary Americans more than opposition to the out-of-control spending of the last two years.

Goolsbee might listen to the sage words of a senator from 2006:

“[The vote to raise] America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US government can’t pay its own bills [and] that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies . . . ”

An insane Republican?

No, that was then-Sen. Barack Obama explaining his vote against raising the debt ceiling — to “only” $9 trillion.

The party is going to stop.

The only question is: When?

Republicans would be insane not to force the issue. We wish them well.