Every time, we have been drowned out by statist commentators within the mainstream press who, like Chicken Little, have consistently cried, "Raise the debt ceiling one more time! If you don't, the sky will fall in on us! Just one more time!" Some of those commentators even maintained that the federal debt didn't matter because "we owe it to ourselves."

Of course, Congress and the president, time after time, have raised the debt ceiling to permit the feds to continue the money flowing into the coffers of the welfare-warfare state. After each time, they have continued spending money like there was no tomorrow, knowing that they could make the same Chicken Little arguments for raising the debt ceiling the next time.

The assumptions always been that the Federal Reserve, the federal government's central bank, would simply print up the money to pay off the debt, which, of course, would inflate the money supply, thereby reducing the value of everyone else's money.

The beauty of this monetary-debasement scheme, from the standpoint of federal officials and those people who feed at the public trough, was that most people would not realize that the Federal Reserve was the cause of rising prices of gasoline, food, clothing, healthcare, and other essentials. They'd follow the federal cue that greedy businessmen and profiteers were the cause of inflationary suffering.

Of course, this inflationary process has been going on for decades. We addressed it in our very first year in 1990 here at FFF. We've been addressing it ever since. As I have repeatedly stated over the past three decades, out-of-control federal spending, debt, and inflation are not going to end well for the American people.