In his scholarly "A Short Primer on the National Debt," John Steele Gordon gets most things right. Unfortunately, he (like many others) understates by a huge amount, the total federal government debt.

America’s national debt now exceeds $15 trillion, which is roughly equal to the value of all goods and services the U.S. economy produces in one year. If left unchecked, America's debt will have catastrophic consequences for the future of the nation. How did we arrive at this point?

Understandably, the country wants its elected representatives to address the nation's fiscal crisis. But in doing so, will it be creating a crisis on the national security front?

Will we recover, unbridle ourselves of debt, innovate, pay for our national security? Or, is China fated to become number one, leaving us to live in a Chinese world?

The primary drivers of our growing debt burden are the “Big 3” entitlements of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Yet as part of the debt ceiling deal that created sequestration when the Super Committee failed, politicians effectively fenced off nearly two-thirds of the federal budget and the main source of our over-spending. 

The debate over the debt limit provides an opportunity for meaningful fiscal reform. The debt subject to the debt limit should be redefined to include only the total of all debt instruments held by the public, and Congress should develop uniform standards for regular, plain-English disclosure to the public of all unfunded governmental obligations, separate and distinct from the publicly held debt.

The expansion of agency debt not only imposes risk and realized losses on taxpayers, it also increases the cost of Treasury's direct financing, by creating a huge pool of alternate government-backed securities to compete with Treasury securities, and thus increases the interest cost to taxpayers.

With Europe collapsing, China stumbling, and India and Brazil retreating from full free market reform, we’re the last stable, pro-growth economy left.