The history of U.S. bankruptcy

Today our federal government has $31.4 trillion of national debt recorded on its books, including $24.6T of Public Debt—which yields a Public Debt/GDP Ratio of 94%. Studies have shown that once Public Debt exceeds 90% of GDP, the debtor nation falls into a debt death spiral as the interest cost starts to suffocate economic growth needed to repay the debt. China, etc. have stopped loaning us money, so our “Independent” Federal Reserve is now printing money to loan it to the Treasury. We also have over $70T of entitlement promises that are not even recorded on our books. The CBO is projecting that in 10 years the national debt will grow to $52T. We are now facing another “debt ceiling crisis” as our political leaders are telling us we must borrow more money to pay our bills. How did we get in this predicament?
America has a spending problem as our Debt/GDP ratio was only 59% in 2000. Entitlement programs have accounted for all the growth in federal spending since 1960—Congress apparently must hand out free stuff to get re-elected.
History tells us America never had this problem from 1789 to 1930 when the federal government ran 101 budget surpluses as it had a single committee determining the federal budget—with the only exception being from 1880-1920. In 1885 Speaker Samuel Randall delivered this prophetic warning: “If you divide these appropriations among many committees where there ought to be one, you will enter upon a path of extravagance--until you find the country bankrupt.”
In 1930 President Franklin Roosevelt (D) pushed Congress to create various entitlements after the “Great Depression”, along with spreading budget jurisdiction over various committees for the various entitlement programs. BUDGET ACCOUNTABILITY VANISHED! Roosevelt was concerned about moral decay of the citizenry and placed work requirements on the entitlements. FDR was re-elected four more times.
Entitlements were expanded further in the 1960’s under President Johnson’s (D) “Great Society” programs, and again in 2010 under President Obama (D) who even took away work requirements. Today there are more than a dozen committees in each chamber that are responsible for Food Stamps, Student Loans, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, etc.—with each committee having a powerful SPENDING INCENTIVE. Although there are House and Senate Budget Committees, they have no authority to change entitlements. Still NO BUDGET ACCOUNTABILITY!
History tells us that Congress knows how to fix this problem if they wanted to. In fact, Sen. Joe Biden urged in 1979 that all spending (except existing levels of Social Security and Medicare) be subject to annual appropriations, thus “making new and existing entitlements subject to the appropriation of funds, thus effectively ending their entitlement status.” However, apparently the next election was just too important to worry about America going bankrupt.