Concern over underfunding of both public and corporate pension plans has Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, his party and other conservatives making a pre-emptive strike against the idea of federal government bailouts.

The U.S. Treasury Department released a statement on Tuesday, confirming that the federal government has topped $16,000,000,000,000 in debt. (That’s $16 trillion, if you lost count of all the zeros). When combined with state level debt ($4.19 trillion), the number tops $20 trillion in total public debt. At the end of 2008, just before President Obama officially...