Are we facing a debt explosion?

The answer is an emphatic YES! The New York Times recently ran an article on the wave of debt payments facing our federal government.

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These figures, by the way, don't include any additional expenditures that will undoubtedly arise from the institution of so-called "Health Care Reform" or a "Cap and Trade" system.

The article continues:

Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.

The problem, many analysts say, is that record government deficits have arrived just as the long-feared explosion begins in spending on benefits under Medicare and Social Security. The nation’s oldest baby boomers are approaching 65, setting off what experts have warned for years will be a fiscal nightmare for the government.

For far too long Americans have been pretty juvenile in their demands on government, much like the child that wants a pony for Christmas but doesn't bother to consider how they're going to house or feed it, let alone how mom and dad are going to pay for it. We have some difficult choices ahead of us and we'd better make sure that we make some tough decision before the decisions are made for us.