Decades of free spending have run up a $40 trillion national debt. But this week's bond market sell-off suggests Washington may soon be compelled to make some long-deferred, and politically unpalatable, choices that will leave few Americans unscathed.
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 inevita… [+13 chars]