So simple even a cave man can understand it

Not a bad illustration. It demonstrates how citizens across the country are making hard decisions in order to bring their spending in line with their income. Would that our elected representatives in Washington would show similar restraint.

The problem I have with this video is that it is based on a false premise. The 1.3 trillion is only the annual deficit. A much larger problem is the accumulated debt. A larger problem still is the looming problem of unfunded entitlements.

Glancing quickly at usdebtclock.org I see that the national debt is currently at around $14 trillion. Social Security and Medicare, not to mention Obamacare, will be some multiple of that in a decade or two depending upon whose assumptions you use.

We're broke, folks. And our federal government is utterly and completely incompetent. I don't know what it will look like when it happens, but our economy is going to crash into the side of a mountain. My sense of it is that the day of reckoning is not that far away. Don't blame me if it catches you by surprise.

Not with a bang but with a whimper

That didn't take long. From FoxNews:

Deficit Commission Report Fails to Advance to Congress

"A sweeping proposal aimed at cutting $4 trillion from the budget over the next decade failed to win enough votes Friday to clear the commission President Obama entrusted to solve the nation's daunting fiscal problems. "

I don't have much use for either Erskine Bowles or Alan Simpson. I didn't think their proposal was anything special. But they did at least skewer a few sacred cows and that is to be applauded. I guess it was too much to hope for that we might finally have a serious national conversation about government debt.

If one considers not only the reported national debt but unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare, the United States now owes more than the GDP of the entire world. You can't overcome that by, "soaking the rich." And you can't overcome it by borrowing 40 cents of every dollar spent.

It appears that, like a drunk, we are going to have to hit bottom before we can start getting better. That is going to be a very, very ugly thing indeed.