We have a stupid party and an evil party, and a grown-up party with a spine is nowhere to be found

The federal debt, deficit and spending situation is one of those sad facts of post-American life that quickly make any description of it into a uselessly trite platitude. At this point, nothing of any substance is conveyed by saying that Washington is "broken" or that "the process" is "out of control." The image of speeding headlong toward the precipice has even lost its ability to jar.

Maybe raw numbers can still have some effect. Let's look at the latest and see:

It has taken a little more than six months for the U.S. national debt to grow by a trillion dollars, a quick clip that has little precedent over the nation’s recent history. 

Last week, the debt hit $21 trillion for the first time, rising from the $20 trillion mark it notched on Sept. 8. The debt is guaranteed to go higher, with President Donald Trump having signed a debt-limit suspension in February, allowing unlimited borrowing through March 1, 2019. Economists expect wider deficits to result from the tax cut Trump signed in December. 

While a trillion-dollar increase over roughly six months isn’t unprecedented — there was one in 2009, during the Great Recession, and another in 2010 — it’s certainly fast. 

The national debt exceeded $20 trillion in September 2017, after taking 20 months to add a trillion dollars. A debt limit that had been in place since March 2015 was raised in March 2017, and again on Sept. 8, 2017. 

And now the omnibus spending bill has passed the House, in another of those frantic conclusions to the sausage-making process hours before a government shutdown would go into effect.

And, as usual, it includes things that it should include, but a number of things that it most definitely should not include, because those were necessary to get Democrats on board. Yes, it provides a much-needed boost to financing of the national defense, but your tax dollars are going to continue to fund Planned Parenthood's extermination of fetal Americans, sanctuary cities, the "Affordable" Care Act, and this $900 million earmark for rail and tunnel improvements between New York and New Jersey.

Oh, there's some funding for a wall, but let's be candid about this whole wall business. The Very Stable Genius pretty much has to continue to push for it, given that it was largely what caused the formation of his base when his campaign got going. But most illegal aliens now are here due to visa overstays, not big influxes over the border. E-Verify is far more important.

And, as usual, the bill itself is huge (2,300 pages) and there was no time for lawmakers to actually study it.

And, as always, it leaves intact the Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and the EPA, and nothing is done to begin restructuring of Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security.

Mr. Madison, call your office.