I gave a little cheer when I heard about the GAO report on Fox News. Their teaser about what we could do if we could only save a billion dollars was cute: “We could buy a gazillion school kids a new iPad!”. It turns out that the potential savings are more in the neighborhood of 350 billion a year! What to do with all that money?!

I can see the Democrat's mouths starting to water already. How about for a change, we use a little common sense? I ask you, what's the use of saving the money if we just pour it back into another questionable Federal program? How did we get into this mess in the first place? Why not use that huge savings to reduce the debt?

Believe it or not, our huge debt is exactly like a Sword of Damocles, hanging over us by a thread. The only thing that's keeping us from disaster right this minute is the unusually low interest rate. If that ever changes, not even drastically, but only badly, say a 10% interest rate on our debt, instead of the 4 or 5 we have now, what would the interest on that debt cost us, per year? Would we be able to pay it? If not, we all know what happens then, or should know. Who knows what might make that happen? One thing is for sure: the amount we pay in interest on the debt now, and any increases to that yearly amount, reduce the amount of hard earned tax money that's available for things that we can all agree are necessary! How much is the yearly interest on the debt right now? Why do we allow this state of affairs to go on?

These are questions that need to be asked. Why is reducing the dangerous level of our national debt not a higher priority? The state of affairs is a clear and present danger to the republic. It looks to me suspiciously like some of our leaders are in serious denial mode, as concerns our debt!

Why aren't we more aware of our misplaced priorities?  Playing ostrich about the danger of our debt is not an option anymore. Not if we want to survive. Unlike global warming or the effectiveness of any given Federal program, all this is easily understood and provable fact. Let's hope that the chickens don't come home to roost before we can get the henhouse cleaned out! Let's hope very, very hard!

“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” – Thomas Paine

“I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.” – Thomas Jefferson