Within the next few weeks, probably as soon as the votes on health-care reform have been taken, the Senate faces the painful duty of once again raising the statutory limit on the national debt, as the House already has done.

It is never fun for the party in power, but this year will be harder than ever on the Democrats. The final accounting on the just-ended fiscal year, delivered last week, showed a record deficit of $1.4 trillion, a gap that is the largest since the end of World War II when measured against the size of the overall economy.

The Republicans are poised to pounce. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell accused the Democrats of "acting like a teenager on a spending spree with his parent's credit card with no regard to who pays the...