Interesting

So what your saying is that it doesn't matter that the interest payment to the national debt is equal to about 40% of the discretionary non defense spending every year??

Just because interest payments to the national debt last year were ~3.5 times the total budgets for NASA, the Dept of Eduction and the Department of Transportation COMBINED doesn't mean anything as long as the deficit is a small part of the GDP??

Oh well silly me.

*Waits to be flamed by Ron and/or Scott because I am a simple dumb hick who does not understand high finance*

Well, yes - you should expect to be flamed. For a number of reasons.

Faulty assumptions
1 - would increasing the budgets of the aforementioned Depts actually increase the standard of living more than the same amount of money that the rest of the money's being spent on?
2 - Do those departments actually need more money OR do they need to spend what they've got in a more efficient manner?
3 - Big chunks of money paying for something is Bad.
4 - And you've introduced a red herring to the discussion, no? The point of the article is that we can continue to manage this level of debt, and likely even increase it, assuming our economy continues to grow as it has been.

To maybe simplify this for you: A person may start with a large chunk of their income going towards their mortgage. In fact, a larger chunk than they'd like. However, by pursuing ever increasing pay, that chunk becomes smaller and smaller over time. In fact, if the topline grows at the same rate, it actually widens the gap between the mortgage payment and the available monies, meaning one can actually spend more - and that more money is available for the normal things.

Just because you don't like how the money's being spent doesn't make it bad.