The federal deficit for last year (i.e., the amount by which all federal expenditures exceeds revenues) was about $600 billion, or about 6 percent of GDP.

combination of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, a new Medicare prescription benefit, the effects of the recession and the Obama administration’s stimulus spending and tax cuts early in his administration.

percent deficit, you end up with about a 10 percent deficit, which is, of course, where we find ourselves today and is clearly unsustainable. This perspective certainly suggests that if we want to balance the budget by returning to historic norms, we have some work to do on both sides of the ledger. David Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General and

A good place to begin to try and understand the federal government’s finances is a report issued by an obscure federal agency known as Financial Management Services.

Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum in their book That Used to Be Us describe the Democrats’ and Republicans’ “war on math,” noting that both sides ignore irrefutable financial realities. It is an apt description of the state of our politics today.

Thomas Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population

When you add a 5 percent increase in expenses to a 3 percent decrease in revenues to a historic 2

This has been the result of a

But I have also found that notwithstanding the hysterical polarization so prevalent today there is a great center to the American people.