Charles Krauthammer's Take...

(National Review Online) - On the mounting federal debt:

The reason that there is this huge increase in the debt ceiling today is that it gets us past Election Day next year, so you won't have to have another raise of the limit until after Election Day. ... Better to take the political hit now [rather] than later.

But as an index of how serious the debt issue is, economist Irwin Stelzer points out that Moody's has been issuing ratings since 1917. The United States has had a Triple A since 1917 — [through] world wars, depressions – unchanged, uninterrupted. In eleven months, Obama has driven Moody's to the point where it has issued a warning that it might have to reduce it to Double A, which is what you get for banana republics or places like Greece.