By John Tamny of Forbes
Last week Congress approved an increase of the U.S. debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion. Once the figure was announced, a lot of understandable hand-wringing ensued, including the suggestion that our federal debt could lose its AAA classification.
Without excusing for one minute federal debt raised to fund all manner of unconstitutional spending, not to mention the greater truth that the debt ceiling ignores unfunded liabilities of the Social Security and Medicare variety, the worry over our federal deficits is arguably overdone. While intimidating given its size, federal debt obscures the much bigger problem which is the level of federal spending itself.
