Since Obama has taken office, our national deficit has more than quadrupled. Earlier this year, as part of the stimulus package, Congress set a statutory debt limit. The limit was $12.104 trillion — and we’ve now exceeded it.

The latest calculation of the National Debt as posted by the Treasury Department has – at least numerically – exceeded the statutory Debt Limit approved by Congress last February as part of the Recovery Act stimulus bill.

The ceiling was set at $12.104 trillion dollars. The latest posting by Treasury shows the National Debt at nearly $12.135 trillion.

A senior Treasury official told CBS News that the department has some “extraordinary accounting tools” it can use to give the government breathing room in the range of $150-billion when the Debt exceeds the Debt Ceiling.

Were it not for those “tools,” the U.S. Government would not have the statutory authority to borrow any more money. It might block issuance of Social Security checks and require a shutdown of some parts of the federal government.

Well gee, it’s a good thing the government has some breathing room, because I’m pretty sure there will be a lot of hyperventilating Americans reading this.

Meanwhile, Obama continues along his merry little way, signing a new spending bill. This one is going to cost us around $1.1 trillion. So that brings our national debt up even more. And as always, it’s in the name of stimulating the economy.

This is a dangerous game that Democrats are playing. And one that we have to stop next year. The thing is, we can’t afford to keep spending like there’s no tomorrow. At best, we can get rid of some of this debt by getting extremely fiscal politicians in office who want really, really small government. Those politicians could theoretically slash a lot of unneeded, wasteful government programs — or the ones that have proven to be an abject failure, like Medicare/Medicaid. But who would do that? The immediate outcry would be overwhelming and they’d never get reelected again. No politician is going to take that chance. So what are our other choices? We can’t keep selling our debt to China, and China doesn’t even want to keep buying it anyways. So basically, we’re saddling our grandchildren, and probably even generations after our grandchildren, with a mountain of debt that they didn’t even create. It’s ridiculous. If we keep this up, we’ll bankrupt ourselves, and we won’t be the number one superpower in the world anymore. You think the economy’s bad now? How will we fare when the government literally has no money anymore? Everything will fall apart. Everything.

We have become too reliant on big government to take care of us, and the only way to step back from this precipice is to stop this runaway spending train immediately. Unfortunately, that’s not likely to happen for at least a year. But how much more damage can be done in a year? Even if the entire Congress is voted out in next year’s elections, the damage may already be done. What have we done to our country in the name of “change”?

I have an honest question to all of the Obama voters out there. Is this the America you want to leave to your children? Are you happy with what you got?