Federal deficit hawks in Congress, driven by ideology and the campaign donations of, for lack of a better term, millionaires and billionaires, held yet another hearing last week about the national debt — but U.S. lawmakers continue to ignore the debt that is causing real trouble for the nation.

The debt danger Americans should really worry about comes from credit cards and student loans.

Personal finance website WalletHub reported that U.S. consumers added $34.4 billion of credit card debt in the second quarter of 2016 alone, equal to nearly half the overall total in 2015 and almost matching the $36 billion for all of 2012.

Credit card debt is likely to show a net increase of $80 billion in 2016, WalletHub forecasts, versus $71 billion in 2015 — pushing outstanding balances over the $1 trillion threshold for the first time and making the average household debt a “perilous” $8,500.

This new debt isn’t due to a rash of irresponsible splurging, but is rather a symptom of the growing gap between living costs and income as people make up the difference with their credit cards, the progressive website AlterNet noted in reporting the study.

This was the finding of a 2014 study by Demos, a New York-based think tank, after it surveyed two groups of low and middle-income families — one group carrying credit card debt and the other with credit cards but no debt.

“Contrary to popular belief, we find little evidence that households with credit card debt are less responsible in their spending habits than households that do not have accumulated debt,” study author Amy Traub wrote.

Will household incomes continue to rise?

Instead, factors including education, assets to fall back on, insurance, and job losses are the best indicators of whether a household will take on credit card debt, the study said.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported this week, lobbyists representing everyone from farmers to realtors are urging Congress to help alleviate the skyrocketing student debt problem that is hobbling consumption and dampening the economy. “A tripling of student debt over the past decade to more than $1.3 trillion has unleashed a torrent of Washington lobbying from outside the education sector,” reporter Josh Mitchell wrote, “with various industries describing a ‘crisis’ requiring federal intervention.”

Farmers say that they can’t attract young people to take over their business because high levels of student debt preclude them for getting business loans. Realtors warn that student debt is preventing graduates from buying homes.

Legislation has been introduced in response to this lobbying, but, as Mitchell observes laconically, “The bills have largely stalled.”

The impact of these crushing private-sector debts on consumer demand is a much more plausible explanation for the nation’s anemic growth than the mythical effects of a growing national debt.

But instead of focusing on this real issue, Republican Senator Dan Coats of Indiana, chair of the Joint Economic Committee, decided to hold another hearing on the “dire” situation of the national debt. Coats warned darkly in a largely empty hearing room of the “upcoming debt implosion” — you know, the one that’s been upcoming for several decades now

“Eventually our nation’s fiscal day of reckoning will come,” Coats warned, even though he undermined his own argument by recalling that 34 years ago, during his first term in Congress, he had expressed alarm at the growth of the debt, though it was much smaller at that time.

Coats called on his friend from Indiana, former Gov. Mitch Daniels, as a prime witness. Daniels, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, is now president of Purdue University and co-chair of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a self-designated guardian of fiscal rectitude.

Daniels blithely asserted — without providing a shred of evidence — that the growing national debt is crowding out private investment, even as entitlement spending is squeezing out every other federal activity. Daniels, whose testimony appeared as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week, went on to imply — again without any demonstrable cause and effect — that the economic malaise among much of the population must be related to this growing debt.

Such as it is, the testimony is little more than an ideological rant, supplying no proof for its premises and no solutions other than “decisive action soon that begins the gradual moderation of unkeepable promises” (translation: cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits).

Not coincidentally, the other two witnesses, former New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg and former budget director Alice Rivlin, also are affiliated with that same Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The hearing, in fact, seemed like little more than a show trial for the national debt mounted by this advocacy group.

The board of directors of the Committee tells you everything you need to know about its agenda. Of the 38 members, 33 are what could most politely be described as old white guys. (The other five are women, also somewhat homogeneous in age and race.) Board member Peter Peterson, the private-equity magnate who has made the deficit his own personal bugbear, is a billionaire, and many other directors are quite wealthy. They want less government spending and lower taxes so they can hang on to that wealth.

Perhaps if that board would take decisive action to increase its racial, age, and gender diversity, it would have a different view of what constitutes a responsible budget and could encourage Congress to deal with the real issues voters face rather than the chimera of debt implosion that never arrives.