What's Your Opinion? National Debt and National Security

In his recent speech to The Commonwealth Club, CIA Director Leon Panetta made a sobering case for redressing our country's long-standing practice of living beyond its means and driving up the national debt. As the San Diego Union Tribune wrote:

By far the most insightful speech we’ve heard of late from an Obama administration official came recently when CIA Director Leon Panetta addressed the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Panetta warned that if the federal government continued to run $1 trillion annual deficits – a very real possibilitygiven the blitheness of President Barack Obama and Congress about red ink –the national debt would become a threat to national security. The CIA boss makes a crucial point: An America that has to spend a quarter of its revenue just for interest on the debt is likely to be an America so weakened that it cannot protect itself from its enemies. Panetta said it was foolish to think “that we can remain a powerful nation” unless the United States lives within its means. He’s exactly right –and we hope he makes this argument to the president at the next Cabinet meeting.


 What do you think? Is our national debt a threat to national security? Why? What can be done about it? How should the country change that? Give us your opinion -- leave a comment below!