OPINION: Elise Nieshalla – The state employed disciplined budgeting, debt repayment, spending cuts and targeted tax relief to dig itself out of a cash-flow crisis. To deal with crushing national debt, Washington policymakers should model this discipline. In public finance, the national debt is one of the oldest stories in Washington, and yet now the most urgent. It took 205 years for our country to accumulate its first trillion dollars in debt, and now it increases by that amount every handful of months. For decades, it has been pushed off to be addressed later — after the next election, the next crisis or the next continuing resolution.

But with the yearly interest payments on the national debt now the fastest-growing line item in the federal budget, having now surpassed annual military budget and Medicare expenditures, the need is urgent to deal with this consuming problem roaring down the tracks.

Now is the time to discuss, evaluate, identify and implement fiscal solutions to uphold the principles our Founding Fathers championed: accountability, restraint and a duty to preserve freedom and opportunity for future generations — principles that severe indebtedness undermines.