From aircraft carriers to debt carriers

From Mark Steyn’s column “Dependence Day” (emphasis mine):

According to the [Congressional Budget Office]’s 2010 long-term budget outlook, by 2020 the U.S. government will be paying between 15 and 20 percent of its revenues in debt interest—whereas defense spending will be down to between 14 and 16 percent. America will be spending more on debt interest than China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel spend on their militaries combined. The superpower will have advanced from a nation of aircraft carriers to a nation of debt carriers.

Now I am not saying that high defense spending is always good – it all depends on how you are spending that money – but that’s another topic entirely. The fact that our debt, which as of this post is over $14 trillion (according to defeatthedebt.com and usdebtclock.org), is this high in my estimation poses a far greater threat to the United States security than al Qaeda and their Islamist allies.

To put it another way, our debt is more than the total economies of China, the United Kingdom, and Australia combined. I find this unacceptable, but does Washington? We shall see just how different this Congress is from the last one.