Wake up and smell the debt!

I didn’t know whether to headline this story, “It’s the debt, stupid!” or “Wake up and smell the catastrophe,” so I settled on “Wake up and smell the debt!”

But whatever you do, wake up soon, or you will not be able to afford to wake up at all.

And if you don’t believe me because I am a conservative and therefore deemed suitable for slandering, then at least pay attention to the New York Times and the Washington Post.

In the last month, they have both published stories warning that the United States is on a dangerous path of borrowing and spending that could lead to unimaginable disaster.

In a story titled “Wave of debt payments facing U.S. government,” reporter Edmund M. Andrews of the Times wrote that the federal government is financing its trillion-dollar a year borrowing “with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true.”

That’s because they are too good to be true. As one person quoted in the story says, “The government is on teaser rates.”

Yet there is virtually no voice in the government for cutting back on spending. Instead, under both the recent Bush administration and the Obama administration, spending has ballooned. Bailouts, entitlements, health-care subsidies: it appears that the government has an endless amount of money to give away.

But the plain and simple fact is that the government is spending money it doesn’t have. If a politician won’t admit that to you, then he is a knave or a fool, or possibly both. If he is a fool, vote him out of office. If he is a knave, tar and feather him and THEN vote him out of office. You have been lied to.

Yet the American people seem to love a tall tale. Plenty of them actually believe that if Congress agrees to spend $1 trillion on health care, the government will actually make money. That’s a good one.

But if even the mainstream media don’t believe it any longer, maybe there is hope. The Washington Post article by Joel Achenbach, entitled “A surplus of worry over nation’s deepening debt,” is even more bleak than the story in the Times.

“The problem is that, if investors think the United States isn’t fiscally responsible, they could start demanding much higher interest rates when they bid on Treasury securities. The feedback loop could get ugly. The nation could have to borrow hundreds of billions just to pay interest on what it owes. This has been touted as a classic path to irreversible national decline.”

Gosh, sounds like something “that crazy Sarah Palin” would say. Or maybe even “that nut job Glenn Beck.” Could that warning have really come from the Washington Post?

Then it has to be serious, right?

Well, the Washington Post and New York Times may be worried. You and I may be worried. But Congress doesn’t have a care in the world. By the end of last week, Rep. Steny Hoyer, the Democratic Majority Leader in the House, had confirmed that Democrats will raise the falsely named “debt ceiling” by $1.8 trillion. Yep, that’s on top of the current $12 trillion in debt that we already can’t pay.

I wonder how many more people would be in bankruptcy today if they could raise their credit limits on their personal credit cards without consulting with the bank. (“Oops! Reached my limit! Time to add a few more thousand on the top!”) It’s absurd, of course, yet that is just what Congress intends to do.

Can’t pay your bills? Just borrow more to make ends meet! Can’t afford to pay for health care for every man, woman and child in the country? No problem. Just raise the debt ceiling! The sky’s the limit!

Of course, we won’t raise the ceiling above our ability to pay (wink! wink! nod! nod!) — that would be just plain stupid.

So some Democrats are putting their foot down by saying they won’t vote for the higher debt ceiling unless Congress does something about the debt — something meaningful, something substantial, something new and untried — like naming a commission to study the problem! Geez, that Congress, you have to hand it to them. They have some big thinkers in there. No real reason to cut the spending without studying the problem first. Which reminds me, maybe we should get someone to name a commission to study the Congress and its inability to govern.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is watching warily as Uncle Sam looks more and more like a doddering fool who needs to have a guardian appointed to manage his affairs.

Moody’s Investors Services, the company whose ratings are used as a guide to the potential worthiness of bond offerings, has announced that it is worried about the ability of the United States to cut its deficit to a manageable level.

Moody’s said that if the United States doesn’t act quickly to turn things around, it would probably lose its solid-gold Triple-A rating in 2013. That would mean the United States would have to pay higher interest rates on its bonds, thus resulting in an even greater debt load going forward.

Ultimately, of course, the less you know about all this the better. You will sleep much more securely at night if you DON’T smell the debt.

One of the economists named in the Washington Post story, Leonard Burman, had a good solution though. He said he has developed a computer model that shows that a “catastrophic budget failure” is a real possibility if Congress continues to pay its debt by borrowing more and more money.

“I try not to be too depressed,” said Burman. “Because if I really thought it was going to play out the way this model works, I would just move to a cabin in Montana and stockpile gold and guns.”

Well, at least I am already in Montana. One out of three is not a bad start.

n Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com