But there is a clear causation here. In order to keep increasing spending forever as they are doing, govs need tax revenue, the more money they are allowed to borrow, the more debt they can create. They couldn't create so much debt if they didn't have tax revenue to justify their ability to repay their debt. Problem is, at some point, if you want to keep on increasing spending and therefor your debt forever, you have to increase taxes forever too and that's what's killing the economy. Not to mention that it doesn't even work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve