evidence: To do that, we have to understand what causes them. Well, for starters, our Federal Government has been living beyond its means for more than a generation. One of the wisest of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, warned that the public debt is ``the greatest of dangers to be feared.'' He believed that is was wrong for one generation to forever burden the generations yet to come, and for the first 150 years of our history, our leaders heeded Jefferson's warning.