In the first video, Professor Anthony Davies of Duquesne University looks at how long it takes for the government to run out of money in a given year. The government collects $2.2 Trillion in revenues and spends $3.8 Trillion...leaving us to borrow $1.6 Trillion a year. He goes through the simple math that shows that the government runs out of the money it has collected by 11:59 PM on July 31st. This leaves 5 months of the year unfunded by revenues.
He then walks through cutting different parts of government and the effect it would have on balancing the budget. He cuts everything but entitlements and debt interest payments and it still does not balance the budget. As he puts it, "In other words, we can reduce the Federal government to nothing more than a glorified assisted-living facility, and we still wouldn't be able to balance the budget."
In the second video, Jeff Miron of Harvard University starts out his video by saying "Cut entitlements, and then cut entitlements, and then cut entitlements some more." The reason for this is clear from the chart above. Spending on entitlements, which has no basis in the Constitution, is more than half of the total budget. You cannot ignore entitlements and keep the country fiscally viable.
For these reasons alone, we need some serious people in Washington...not the self-aggrandizing power mongers we have there now. We need true statesmen, like we haven't seen in decades, to deal with a very serious problem that threatens our country's entire economy and our standing in the world.
