Should Congress raise the debt ceiling, or refuse in order to drive through cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending? This is a question my friend Ty Cobb contemplated in a recent Nevada Appeal column.Federal debt is now roughly equal to our annual Gross Domestic Product, its highest level since 1947. More than a third of that federal debt is intra-governmental debt. What matters most is the debt held by the public, and especially the debt we owe to foreigners. Americans have been spending more than we have been making for decades, unsustainably borrowing from abroad. Federal debt matters, …