Step One: Admit You Have a Problem

To almost everyone but Congress, the scope of our nation’s budget problems were obvious for quite a while. It’s not just the cost of the bailout and the stimulus. We all know how we got here. Back in the halcyon days of the surplus and booming economic growth (remember those?), the President and Congress lived too hard: bloated farm and highway bills, a new prescription drug benefit, and off-budget wars.

We’re looking at a $1.5 trillion budget deficit in 2010 on top of a nearly $1.6 trillion deficit from last year. Deficits over the next ten years total $9 trillion. That’s more than the entire debt accumulated in our nation's history through 2007.