FOD 2015.02.09

Brian Williams and his serial lying is getting all the headlines lately, but there's a much more troubling development undermining our future.

The national debt has dropped out of the headlines recently, but that doesn’t mean that it has gone away. In fact, just a few weeks ago, the debt officially topped $18 trillion. For those keeping score, that equals roughly 101 percent of GDP. In other words, we now owe more than the value of all goods and services produced in this country over a year. And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the debt will climb to almost $27.3 trillion within the next 10 years.

As bad as these numbers sound, they actually understate the problem. That is because they don’t include the unfunded liabilities of programs like Social Security and Medicare. While those liabilities don’t show up on the country’s official balance sheet, they nonetheless represent legal obligations of the US government. Including the expected shortfall from those programs brings are true debt to an unfathomable $90.6 trillion.

Granted, this problem isn't solely of obama's making. Past presidents and congresscritters of both parties have enthusiastically supported pork barrel legislation that increases the debt level while doing little to improve our country. But obama, with his 'free stuff for everyone' programs, has dumped gallons of fuel onto the already-roaring fire.

The worst of it all is, we won't be stuck with the tab. It'll be our children ... and their children ... and their children's children...

Americans everywhere are counting down to the end of the Obama presidency. The damage he has wreaked is beyond calculation. He has hobbled our economy, trashed the Constitution, eroded trust in government, politicized one federal agency after another, poisoned relations among the races, stifled opportunity for poorer Americans, weakened our armed forces, conducted a perverse foreign policy, made the U.S. a laughingstock abroad…the list goes on and on. And we have almost two years yet to go!

At one time the idea of being $20 trillion in debt would have been unthinkable. If one had thought of it, one would have assumed that such a fiscal catastrophe would rank first among the nation’s worries. In fact, the Obama administration has been such a fiasco that he has turned the United States into the Brokest Nation In History® almost as an afterthought. But such profligacy should not be forgotten. Michael Ramirez notes Obama’s parting gift to America’s youth, whose futures he has blighted in so many ways.