Federal Debt Soared Above $18 Trillion Last Week

Congratulations, America! You, or rather your elected officials,
smashed through the $18 trillion ceiling last week, raising the
United States government’s total outstanding
public debt to new heights and leaving shards of devalued
greenbacks scattered around the place.

Woo hoo.

One
decade ago, on December 1, 2004, the sum was a wussy $7.5
trillion. It took a lot of hard work to run up another 10-plus
trillion in debt in those intervening years. This country won’t
bankrupt itself, you know. It takes government officials years of
subsidizing, overpromising, overspending, and maybe some outright
theft to put that many numbers in a row, slather them with red ink,
and hand the bill to our grandkids.

The killjoys at the Congressional Budget Office say this pattern
of continuing deficits and riding debt threatens to drain money
from private investment, compromise national security, and lock the
federal government into doing little other than paying the interest
on what’s it already borrowed—a situation they call
“unsustainable.”

But that’s just crazy talk.
Who says you can’t just borrow your way into the future and
never pay it back without nasty consequences? Whaddya say we shoot
for $50 trillion?

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