The 'Supercommittee' Fails Kids, Too

By Andrew L. Yarrow

The wolf is at the schoolhouse door.

Charles L. Schultze, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, decades ago suggested that federal debt would either cause an imminent mortal threat to the U.S. economy, like a snarling wolf; long-term economic deterioration, like “termites in the woodwork”; or, least plausibly, no real danger, like a “domesticated pussycat.”

Now that the Nov. 23 deadline will pass without the ludicrously conceived congressional “supercommittee” reaching a meaningful debt-reduction agreement, what does this...