One Last Look At Our Crippling National Deficit - For At Least One Week

I know we have been pounding the whole Federal debt and deficit spending problem for a while but it is so important. As we illustrated with a recent post, "Snoopy, The Peanuts Comic Strip and $13 TRILLION," if we as a nation do not solve this problem and get government spending under control, nothing else matters. A bankrupt nation's freedoms and other priorities take a back seat to getting out of the fiscal morass that the political class is us driving towards.

Thus, one more post on the Federal deficit and I will take a rest from the topic for at least one week, I promise. It does get so depressing but it is critical that this topic be kept front and center. The following quantifications of the Federal debt comes from Michael Tanner of the NY Post in an article that was summarized in the June 18, 2010 edition of The Week magazine:

• As we have pointed out previously, Mr. Tanner also mentions that the Federal deficit now exceeds $13 TRILLION.
• According to Mr. Tanner, if you spent a dollar a second, 24 hours a day, it would take you 416,000 YEARS to spend $13 TRILLION.
• The $13 TRILLION does not include unfunded liabilities of almost $16 TRILLION for Social Security.
• The $13 TRILLION does not include unfunded liabilities of at least $50 TRILLION for Medicare.
• Just to pay off the $13 TRILLION with no increases in the current Federal government spending levels would require "raising the tax rate on the rich to 88% and on the middle class to 63%."
• Mr. Tanner concludes that you cannot pay off the current government spending with tax increases, there has to be drastic, unprecedented cuts in government spending. If that is not done, he predicts that we will follow Greece down the rat hole to insolvency.

There is no reason to suspect that Mr. Tanner is not right in his math since we have already confirmed the $13 TRILLION from other sources and it is generally acknowledged that both Social Security and Medicare will be a tremendous drain on the government's financials once the baby boomers mature, with Social Security being the less onerous problem. If his numbers are right, then the total Federal government debt is not the current $13 TRILLION but $13 TRILLION plus the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare, bringing the total Federal debt to a whopping $79 TRILLION. Just for illustration, consider the following:

• With about 117 million US households today, each U.S. household would be responsible for about $675,000 worth of Federal debt.
• With population of about 310 million people, each U.S. citizen is responsible for about $254,000 worth of Federal debt.
• If you lined up 79 TRILLION one dollar bills end-to-end, they would circle the earth almost 300,000 times.

These are deficit numbers that cannot be solved by raising the highest tax rate. and undoing the "Bush tax cuts", from 35% to 39%. But this is the big step that Obama and the Democrats want to take to address the budget issue. However, to quote an old saying, this is about as effective as a fart in a hurricane. It will do nothing.

Why there is no sense of urgency in Washington is baffling. The numbers do not lie, these are government calculated, official numbers. In "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," we quoted an ex-comptroller of the United States, David Walker, who estimated in a speech in 2008 that the total financial liabilities of the country were about $53 TRILLION. This was not from a Republican, a Tea Partier or Fox News. This was a seriously trained accounting professional who saw first hand in his powerful government position how bad our fiscal status was and is. the only problem is that it has gotten worse in the two years since he issued the $53 TRILLION estimate. We are seeing what inaction in this area will result in from viewing the Greece situation: riots and deaths in the street, a collapsing economy, and asking for handouts from the rest of Europe and the IMF.

That is a preview of where we are heading and nobody in Washington is doing anything about it. This means that 1) they are ignorant of this reality, 2) don't care about this reality and see it as an opportunity to continue to reduce our freedom and increase their power, 3) they do not know how to fix the problem or 4) they are too gutless to fix the problem, thinking that courage and doing the right, but painful things, will not help them get re-elected. Whatever the reason, that is why all of them need to be defeated the next time they come up for re-elections. Doing nothing is not an option but it appears it is the only option these hurricane watchers are doing.

Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/