Let's see, for the last year the numbers were calculated, 20111, the government took in $2.3 trillion and spent $3.6 trillion. Put that on a personal level. You're family took in 230K and spends 360K. Not sustainable long term. Both husband and wife need to get butt in gear cutting spending or figure a way to dramatically boost incomes. We're all in this together. So we ask high earning dad to take on another client and work 47 hours a week instead of 45 and and mom is asked to keep her Mercedes another year before trading it in for the latest model. All sorts of hell is breaking loose and they are talking about covering only about 10 percent of the shortfall. As a marriage counselor I'd tell them to try another analyst. As an American voters -- we send some self-serving politicians sputtering economic gibberish back into the fray with instructions to "fight harder." Unless somebody gets courageous and kills the Republican myth that taxing people who got nothing will solve the problem and the Democratic myth that people over $250K can solve it with a higher tax rate, we got a political morass that won't get fixed. But like a guy who weighs 270 when he ought to weigh 200, we don't not act now just because we can't solve the whole problem. Get on the bike, give up the pasta and if you weigh 250 at the end of the year it's a good start.