U.S. Rep. Todd Akin will get the support of the Missouri party apparatus and GOP politicians now that a deadline for withdrawing from the race has passed.

“Just like all of our GOP candidates elected in the August primary, the Missouri Republican Party stands behind Congressman Todd Akin in the race for United States Senate. Claire McCaskill is far too liberal for Missouri …” David Cole, chairman of the Missouri Republican Party, said in a release.

U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., has pledged his own support for Akin and said Republicans need to become the majority party in the U.S. Senate.

Akin was shunned by many fellow Republicans after he said few women become pregnant as a result of “legitimate rape.” He has admitted his mistake frequently since the August interview, saying he was wrong.

Now that the deadline to get his name off the ballot has passed, those who called for Akin to step aside and let an uninjured candidate run against the incumbent McCaskill, might be thinking that at least Akin supports the right to life.

Recent polls show McCaskill ahead by 6 percentage points or less. That’s too close to call after she led by 10 percent immediately after Akin’s gaffe.

Today’s Wall Street Journal story by a host of financial and government writers offers a particularly scary look at the U.S. debt crisis.

The upshot is that the federal deficit from the last four years — all $5.2 trillion of it — is only the tip of the iceberg. The Treasury must raise $4 trillion this year alone to service interest payments on the cumulative debt.

Low interest rates that are designed to help bolster the housing market and dampen inflation have kept the debt burden from being even worse.

Low interest rates also have signaled to stock market investors that U.S. economic growth will be sluggish for some time to come. Investors and the financial sector need higher interest rates to spark the kind of growth that would signal a true economic recovery.

If that happens, well, the federal debt service costs will rise dramatically.

The story is long, but worth the read. One scary factoid from the piece points out that debt has increased over the past four years by the equivalent of $55,000 per U.S. household.

How does that gibe with your net worth?