Recommended: Deficit Balloons Into National-Security Threat

Gerald Seib in today's Wall Street Journal, in an article entitled Deficit Balloons Into National-Security Threat, argues that the growing size of our national debt is no longer an inconvenience, it is now a serious threat to our nation. The alarming chart below, from his article, speaks for itself:




The Democrats would like to blame the Bush administration, which certainly didn't show much fiscal restraint. But in fact, the Obama administration deficit is larger in the first year than the total Bush excesses over his eight years in office, so that argument is weak at best. Nevertheless, it hardly matters who is at fault here - all that matters now is convincing Congress to do something effective about it, and that seems like a tall order.