WaPo: How Canada and four other countries regained AAA ratings

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You can't really look at tax/GDP right now because the carry forward losses from the recession combined with temporary tax cuts in the stimulus make it artificially low. If you look back to 2007 tax/GDP was only slightly below the post war norms.

On the other hand spending/GDP is way up against any historical measure.

I stand corrected, thanks. Digging into the spending numbers some more, I feel the bulk of growth is related to the Great Recession (i.e. UI) and a continuation of previous administration policy (i.e. emergency measures). Medicare spending does appear to be an almost immediate consideration. The growth in all of discretionary spending is meaningfully higher than inflation; the biggest beneficiary was the DoD. Cuts to discretionary spending are important, but it's vastly overshadowed by mandatory spending.