The Congressional Budget Office has made a prediction that the American people should find both alarming and appalling: Within 10 years, our national debt will be equal in size to our whole economy! It will match our gross domestic product, or GDP, which is the total of all that we produce as a nation in an entire year!
The CBO predicts that uncontrolled debt could subject the United States to a financial crisis similar to the one that much of Europe is currently enduring. Greece, for instance, is facing the prospect of outright default by mid-July because it has failed to control its spending. Greece has already received one bailout from its European neighbors, but another one is having to be contemplated to rescue it from bankruptcy – and even that might not work.
Don’t we as Americans realize that we are inviting the same economic calamity with the way that our federal government continues to spend trillions of dollars that we simply do not have?
We know what to do about it: Cut the wasteful spending that caused the debt problem in the first place.
The question is, do we have the will to do it?