The national debt grew under the Clinton presidency. A minor tweak to the retirement age or a change to the medicaid and Medicare eligibility rules, or a few bases closed overseas, could have fixed it then, and turned a budget surplus into a real surplus. The problem is much larger now. The drug benefit, passed for pure political gain, is now a huge driver of the debt. Yes, the SS contribution surplus that was counted as “general revenue” for decades has now turned over. The $2.7T worth of bonds and bills issued can no longer be cashed against tax receipts, but now are cashed with borrowed money.

Yes, the old people who make up the largest percentage of Romney’s infamous 47% have become accustomed to a meager SS and medical care monthly stipend, and are proud to live “independently”. Most of that was unattainable to previous generations of seniors. They lived with their children until they died, or in “old folks homes” (and I remember them.) Their medical concerns were largely overlooked; they died of “old age” and “natural causes”. Today they die of alzheimer’s and cancer, both of which destroy a lifetime’s accumulation of weath in a few years.

The teabaggers are universally infused with the “keep your government hands outta my Medicare” mentality. It’s a really good deal for them; they pay for about 60% of the services they get, the taxpayers making up the difference. Seems just a bit hypocritical, though, don’t you think?

States set medicaid eligibility and the fedgov issues money to them as block grants. The states with the largest medicaid usage rates (the impoversihed and working poor) are red politically, and went for Romney in droves. “Keep the federal gov outta my medicaid”? Seems a bit hypocritical, don’t you think?

The president proposed $400B in cuts and $160B of tax increases per year. That would have brought the average deficit back down to what was normal throughout the GWB years ($400B to $600B until the last three years when the crash occured.) The GOP laughed and walked out.

And you can’t use the Clinton model anymore because his surplus was calculated using a social security fund that was flush with cash because it was, at that time, taking in more than it was paying out. That is no longer the case.

I believe we need to raise taxes and that is inevitable, but any well read person knows that this revenue issue is not a serious part of the solution and is all politics. I also, believe that the goverment has mismanaged our money all this time and will continue to do so as they run around the country making more promises knowing there is no way to pay for it – Obama is still doing this. He is a perpetual campaigner and really doesn’t do much else. So while we should all pay more in taxes and share in the pain of past mistakes by all of our politicians, I believe that we need to do this only to re-teach ourselves what not to do again in the future. But I also believe that raising taxes will hurt the economy since it is not very robust at this time, it will hurt people since they are not making what they used to make, and that the money will likely not be used to pay down the debt as it should be – but rather it will be used for more spending to fulfill campaign promises and try to hold on to power.

The bottom line is that the debt is unsustainable, and we can not keep going on like this without serious reforms. True equality and fairness will never happen as long as you have all the different kind of people in the world that we have and unless you are headed down the communism path, we need to acknowledge that capitalism has its flaws but through-out history has provided the most prosperity and individual freedom, for all the classes, than any other economic model. Sure it doesn’t provide equality, sure there are haves and have nots, but don’t those same classes exist in communist China – but even to the more extremes?