Sure as apples in the fall, Congress most likely will — after much hand-wringing — raise the government’s $19.9 trillion debt limit next month, enabling it to borrow even more money. Failing to do so by Sept. 29 risks a first-ever default.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is calling for a “clean” debt-ceiling bill — that is, with no legislative strings attached, just as President Obama demanded the same. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said this week there was “zero chance” Congress wouldn’t raise the debt ceiling.

For all their bickering, Democrats and Republicans are strikingly similar when it comes to spending.

To put the rising national debt in perspective, if every single dollar from all goods and services produced in the U.S. last year went to pay off what’s owed — leaving nothing for food, shelter or clothes — Uncle Sam still would be $1 trillion in the hole, according to The Daily Signal.

To unshackle America’s children from a perilous future debt, spending cuts must accompany any bill to raise the debt ceiling. Yet fiscal restraint remains a bipartisan anathema.

As regular Trib columnist John Stossel recently noted, Congress ignored President Trump’s calls for cuts in the omnibus spending bill.

Taxpayers deserve a commitment to cut spending before Congress, again, raises the debt ceiling — and digs the hole we’re all standing in even deeper.

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(c)2017 The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (Greensburg, Pa.)

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