If you haven't visited the US national debt clock recently, you should do so. www.usdebtclock.org
As of January 1, 2013, the US Federal deficit has now exceeded the size of the annual US economy as measured by GDP: $16.4T vs. $16.3T, respectively.
But the hidden feature of our deficit that your friendly congressman will not discuss is the HUGE unfunded mandates that are looming large while congress putters around. The unfunded mandates are fully 7 times our current annual GDP. We're talking Social Security of course, that that is only have as big a problem as the unfunded Drug plan. And both of those collectively are only half of the Medicare unfunded deficit! Ouch! The total unfunded is $122T (or more of course).
An example is thinking of Social Security as a pension plan. The IRS requires a (publicly traded) company to put in enough money to reasonably cover the pensions that they currently promise. But our federal government has "borrowed" every single dollar ever put into the Social Security. And even if they hadn't, there's not enough money there to pay for the retires that we all have promised to pay. And of course, the problem gets bigger and worse every day.
The compounding effect of not dealing with these issues, makes the problem exponentially worse over time.
So, while the federal government is fiddling in D.C., the real problems -- and solutions -- of country are being postponed.
When fiddling and can-kicking becomes an Olympic event, you can only imagine how hard it will be to beat the US Congress. Might have to split them into two teams so there will at least be a contest for the final match.
Oh. Wanna have a look at the future, based on various forecasts, check out 2016/2017:
U.S. National Debt Clock 2016:
Social Irresponsibility: National Debt
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