Remember the television ad where the auto mechanic looks viewers straight in the eye and says: “You can pay me now or pay me later!” The message: if you change your car’s oil and filter every 5,000 miles, you can avoid a disastrous engine replacement later?

The same principle applies to our national debt. Congress can either take steps to control spending and debt now, or watch interest payments swallow up our hard-earned tax dollars and starve needed programs. Ignoring massive federal borrowing will bite our grandchildren hard in the next decades.

We, the taxpayers, now owe over $29...