While Washington Celebrates the Debt Deal, US Borrowing Tops Total GDP

The last time the US government borrowed this much money as a proportion of GDP, the Greatest Generation had just whipped the Nazis and was setting about rebuilding a war-riddled world. That’s how out of control our spending is now.

US debt shot up $238 billion to reach 100 percent of gross domestic project after the government’s debt ceiling was lifted, Treasury figures showed Wednesday.

Treasury borrowing jumped Tuesday, the data showed, immediately after President Barack Obama signed into law an increase in the debt ceiling as the country’s spending commitments reached a breaking point and it threatened to default on its debt.

The new borrowing took total public debt to $14.58 trillion, over end-2010 GDP of $14.53 trillion, and putting it in a league with highly indebted countries like Italy and Belgium.

We’re going to be downgraded, I just about guarantee it. And honestly, why shouldn’t we be downgraded? The level of debt we have now, and to which the Democrats only want to add more while strangling what’s left of the economy through tax hikes, is unsustainable. And a debt level that would satisfy Moody’s would still be in unsustainable territory.

Moody’s said Tuesday that the government needed to stabilize the ratio at 73 percent by 2015 “to ensure that the long-run fiscal trajectory remains compatible with a AAA rating.”

73% — and we’re nowhere near that. And the Democrats won’t even consider dealing with entitlement spending.

It’ll be some irony when the Greatest Generation’s kids have finally frittered away the nation that the Greatest fought so hard to defend. But that’s where we’re headed.