A few weeks ago, we looked at the national debt and deemed it fixable in . To recap, a $100K debt is a problem for most families, but not to Bill Gates, or even Rush Limbaugh. The wealth of the United States can balance that debt with a little creative thinking. We covered it in Is America Broke?

We had a bigger concern over the deficit - our national credit card, which is how we ran up all of that debt. Imagine your teenager managed to take your credit card and maxed it out. Let's even give him some good motivations - some of it was on pizzas and video games, but some was also gifts to friends, and a lot was to help out friends who needed a few bucks. As parents, do you raise the credit limit on the card and hand it back to him? No. If you were to do what most parents do, you would take away the credit card and set him to work paying the debt off.

You do that because raising the credit limit does not teach your teenager how to be responsible with money, and to live within his means. You do that to teach that credit is to be used only in an emergency only, not as a lifestyle choice. You do that because you understand that you cannot spend more than you take in for very long. It's time to take away the national credit card. The conversation that Joe the Biden said went on at every dinner table in America, needs to happen at the national dinner table. Enough is enough.

Now before you accuse us of publishing another piece bashing Obama, we absolutely acknowledge that the spending spree started under George Jr. Sometimes you have to start a war by running a debt. The Taliban and Al Qaeda needed their butts kicked, and we needed to do it. We'll even give you that Saddam needed to be taken down. We did not need to launch two full scale wars complete with a side of nation building. We certainly did not need to put it on the card. You have to give his dad kudos for Gulf War 1 - we fought it, but the Saudis paid for it.

While we're at it George Jr tried to bring up entitlement reform in 2006. That's the same thing we are tossing around now. Medicare and Social Security were going to go bankrupt. Well, George Jr got his behind handed to him, and to apologize he gave us a tidy new prescription drug benefit. Put it on the card.

Then their was TARP. Let's get a cash advance off the card and give it to banks who behaved badly - no strings attached. Now granted they behaved badly because of policies promoted by the Clinton Administration, but it was on his watch. When Junior entered 2008, the national deficit was between $485 billion and $600 billion, depending on whose numbers you use. The national debt sat at $9.849 trillion, of which he inherited $5.727 trillion from the Bill Clinton (yes, Virginia - Bubba had a balanced budget, but we did owe money).

Enter Obama, and in the world of good intentions we get the "Stimulus" ( Slumdog Billionaire: The Stimulus Plan  ). $787 billion on the card. Then there was Obamacare with the magic "almost" $1 trillion - again, on the card. 99 weeks of unemployment - charge it. Auto bailouts - ah the Chinese are good for it. New wars in Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia. Put 'em on the card. And have Bernake print up $1.6 trillion for pocket change. As of today the deficit is running at $1.6 - 1.8 trillion (again, depending on whose numbers you use), and the debt is breaking through it's $14 trillion dollar ceiling.

In this one area, Obama has outperformed Junior by more than double. He has accomplished more in 3 years than Bush did in eight. And we get the bill. Nice.

So what is the answer? What is it for your teenager? The debt we dealt with - hold a garage sale. We can pay it. Do we hand the credit card back, with a raised credit limit? Not only do we not raise the limit, we need to cut up the credit card. We need to issue the federal government a debit card.

Using current tax rates, we can come up with a dollar figure. That is the amount of incoming tax dollars, which is applied to the debit card. When the card runs dry, the government is out of money. Period. No borrowing the credit card anymore. We are talking the long sought Balanced Budget Amendment that goes back to Thomas Jefferson in 1798 ( and yes, we are aware of the Louisiana Purchase. There are exceptions to every rule. Anyone want to give it back?)  The Feds will need to prioritize their spending, and maybe show some discipline. They will need to see if there's enough cash before they spend it. We tend to think that will cut back on much of the idiocy that is government subsidized.

It will absolutely require a reworking of Social Security and Medicare. The Ponzi pyramid is reversed now with less paying in to support more. It is unsustainable. It is unsustainable because it has become what it is not. Social Security was not designed to be a retirement fund. It was meant to be a supplement, not a replacement for retirement savings.See Social Insecurity

What about our "commitments" to the poor, schools, farmers, etc? There is a strong argument that the federal government should not be involved in any of these things, however we are. It is the job of the congress to prioritize expenses, and to provide funding. If we have to do these things, provide the money to the individual states as a fixed block grant, and let the states decide how best to make use of it. No automatic increases in the grants every year. The states, who are supposed to be the ultimate judges of what their people need under our Constitution, can decide that for themselves.

How about getting more money? Sure, but not by raising taxes - instead by creating new taxpayers. It worked for Reagan, and it worked for Clinton. Even George Junior until the housing crash (His unemployment numbers up to June 2008 were about 5%) . Those Administrations got out of the way of the economy to a large degree, and the economy prospered. People went back to work. More people were paying taxes. The tax coffers swelled. Look at that - more money to work with - to PAY OFF THE DEBT.

We at TPP side with those who would take the credit card away. The Congress is less responsible with it than we could expect our teens to be. Will that happen? We don't know. Boehner has been snookered at least twice and we're not sure of his spine. The Gang of Six proposal is another "trust me" proposition. There is no plan there, just a commitment to an idea about a plan (please, Dad, I promise not to do it again). We said in the national debt article that the deficit would require the adults to step up and take care of it. The adults are us, and it's time to take away the credit card. So says Common Sense.

RLB