Our explosive federal debt is the poison that is killing America

About the crisis of the excessive and ever-enlarging debt of the United States, there is no serious question or debate. The facts are stark and simple. Our current national debt is approximately $15 trillion, which as of the end of 2011 is roughly equal to 100% of our gross domestic product (GDP). In its 2011 Long Term Budget Outlook, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) states the following: “Growing debt would increase the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget …” So the undeniable reality is this: America is approaching a dangerous economic tipping point. In its comprehensive May 2010 report, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s Solutions Initiative minced no words in stating the severity of the problem: “If we don’t change our current policies, this debt is projected to double in the 2020s and triple in the 2030s.”

And that’s just the acknowledged debt. According to David Walker, CEO of the U.S. Government Accountability Office from 1998 to 2008, “Our Government’s unfunded obligations as of September 30, 2008, totaled approximately $42.9 trillion.” Together with our national debt of $15 trillion, that makes us almost $60 trillion in the hole. To put that in prospective, the GDP of the entire world is around $70 trillion. (To grasp the magnitude of such numbers, consider the following: A billion seconds represents approximately 32 years, a trillion seconds represents approximately 32,000 years).

But here’s the really bad news. The hard but irresistible fact is that Congress is not willing to address and is not able to solve this debt problem. The annual deficits and ballooning debt exist exactly because they were created by politicians in Congress, pressured by constituents and interest groups so that they could please the voters back home and get re-elected to office. Increasing debt is an inherent part of the political process, and any attempt by politicians at reining it in is doomed to failure from the start.

This fact has been proven in several ways: by the inability in November 2011 of the congressional “super-committee,” which was charged with finding ways to cut at least $1.5 trillion from the federal budget, to come up with any proposal whatsoever after nearly four months of what it described as “intense negotiations”; by the failure of the House of Representatives in November 2011 to endorse a balanced budget amendment, falling well short of the necessary two-thirds majority; by the dismal reception, and complete dismissal, of the 2010 National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Simpson-Bowles); by Congress’s repeated willingness to increase the national debt limit, when the Treasury and president request it (71 times since 1970); by the failure of the Senate to pass Senator Sam Nunn’s proposal for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution despite a three-year effort in the 1990s; and again in December 2011 when the Senate fell well short of the required two-thirds majority vote on two separate balanced budget amendment proposals.

Since Congress cannot be counted on to address our growing debt crisis, the only hope the American people have of pulling our country back from the brink of financial disaster is to take the matter into their own hands and unite and fight. Our Constitution begins “We the people” not “We the subjects.” In formulating our new form of government, our Founding Fathers struck upon the most revolutionary idea of the modern political age: “citizen sovereignty.” Under our unique form of democracy, power and control was to flow from the bottom to the top. The people themselves were to forever be the ultimate controlling power. Unfortunately the American people’s understanding of their own sovereign rights has faded over time. Now the time has come for the American people to reclaim their sovereignty by forcing Congress to convene a single-issue balanced budget amendment convention.

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