fiscal cliff

With all of the talk about the impending “fiscal cliff”, it’s a good time to step back from the trees and take a good look at the forest and how we got here to begin with.

For the last sixty years or so, Congress has been on an ever growing spending binge, guided by a political philosophy that government should play an ever growing role in our everyday lives – a role which requires more of our substance.  In fact, it increasingly requires more than we can spare in any given year and maintain a healthy economy.  So we borrow the rest, year after year.

This year’s federal deficit is 1.2 trillion, last year’s was 1.2 trillion and next year’s is projected to be over one trillion as well.  Our national debt, the sum total of our annual deficits, is well over 16 trillion.  And all of that is on top of the tens of trillions of dollars in “off-the-books” future obligations to entitlement programs.

When you are in a hole, stop digging, or so the advice goes.  But what do you do when voters keep electing politicians who won’t put down the shovel, but hold to the insane notion that we can somehow dig our way out?