“Year after year, the federal government has spent more than it collected in taxes. Each annual shortfall increased the national debt, slowly at first and then by leaps, defying warnings of an inevitable reckoning,” the Washington Post reports.“Now, the reckoning may be at hand.”“This week’s bond market sell-off brought government borrowing costs to their highest level in almost two decades and prompted an extraordinary Treasury Department intervention.”“After decades of free spending, Washington may soon be compelled to make some long-deferred, and politically unpalatable, choices that will leave few Americans unscathed.”