From AP:

Senate Democrats needed all the 60 votes at their disposal Thursday to muscle through legislation allowing the government to go $1.9 trillion deeper in debt.

Democratic leaders were able to prevail on the politically volatile 60-39 vote only because Republican Sen.-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts has yet to be seated. Republicans had insisted on a 60-vote, super-majority threshhold to pass the measure. …

The measure would put the government on track for a national debt of $14.3 trillion — about $45,000 for every American…

The massive increase in the debt limit would allow majority Democrats to avoid another vote until after the midterm elections this fall. New estimates released by the Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday show that the U.S. this year could run a deficit matching last year’s record $1.4 trillion shortfall. …

The current $12.4 trillion debt ceiling is expected to be reached in mid-February.

Just as with Gordoom’s wild spending policies in the UK and his current scorched earth policy, these numbers are too huge to be comprehended, much less sustained. On both sides of the Pond we are creating an economic environment which will poison the lives of generations to come. The scary things is that nobody seems to have the policies or political strength to do anything about it.

Oh, for the old days and the titans which used to bestride the political landscape. Consider these writings from Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America:

Graphic from Heritage Foundation, idea from Moonbattery.

I’d been asked to write a letter for a “time capsule” which would be opened 100 years from now.

Oh I wrote of the problems we face here in 1976 – The choice we face between continuing the policies of the last 40 years that have led to bigger and bigger government, less and less liberty, redistribution of earnings through confiscatory taxation or trying to get back on the original course set for us by the Founding Fathers. Will we choose fiscal responsibility, limited government, and freedom of choice for all our people? Or will we let an irresponsible Congress set us on the road our English cousins have already taken? The road to economic ruin and state control of our very lives?

If we here today meet the challenge confronting us, those who open the time capsule 100 years from now will do so in [a nation of] beauty, peace, prosperity and the ultimate in personal freedom.

If we don’t keep our rendezvous with destiny, the letter probably will never be read – because they will live in the world we left them, a world in which no one is allowed to read of individual liberty or freedom of choice.

September 1, 1976