As I arrived at Cinemark 17 on Webb Chapel, I could almost feel the tension in the air.  Parked outside the box office were painted mini-Coopers from KISS FM.  Walking through the doors, I beheld a long line of teenagers and twenty-somethings there for the opening of Hamlet 2, an attempt at comedy (a high school drama class sings “Rock Me Sexy Jesus”?) starring pretty-boy Steve Coogan.  I eyed them; they eyed me.  It could’ve gotten real ugly, real fast.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and I hustled past them, presented my ticket, and was directed to the opposite end of the theater, where I found quietly waiting some 120 folks whose average age was about 60.  The ugliness will have to wait.  But only for about ten years, more or less (very likely less).  At least that’s the assessment of David Walker, formerly chief accountant at the General Accountability Office and now chief whistleblower at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.  Mr. Walker, who with Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition has traveled to twenty-five states and forty cities on their “Fiscal Wake Up” tour, plays the leading role in a frightening documentary titled “I.O.U.S.A.” and produced by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Agora Publishing, AARP, and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

          The film opens with cameo appearances by all presidents from Eisenhower to Bush 43.  Cleverly, video clips from state of the union addresses going back fifty years are strung together to make coherent sentences and a coherent message: federal spending is out of control and budget and trade deficits can and will bankrupt the country.

          Were all these presidents, Democrat and Republican, merely crying wolf?  Americans for decades have heard about the need for “spending discipline,” but somehow catastrophe has escaped them?  What’s going on here?  What exactly does I.O.U.S.A. document?  This: as Walker sees it, “the most serious threat to the United States is not some guy in a cave in Afghanistan but our own fiscal irresponsibility.”  He says that the body politic “suffers from a fiscal cancer.”  And DallasBlog readers know what cancer does to the body.

          I.O.U.S.A. breaks the problem into four deficits: budget, savings (personal savings rate is negative 2.9%), trade (U.S. has worst trade imbalance of 224 nations), and leadership.  Take the federal debt, which is the sum total of all deficits and surpluses from the time the first Congress met in 1789 to today.  The first Congress dealt with a $79 million debt, a mere 4% of the new Republic’s gross domestic product (GDP).  By 1835 our forefathers had achieved their goal of zero debt.  1835 then was the last year the federal government (and by extension, We the People) was truly a free government, uninfluenced by the bankers.  From then to the 1970s, politicians at least focused on keeping debt within manageable levels.  For example, in 1945 the debt reached $200 billion, or 122% of GDP, but by 1965 that percentage had fallen to 47%, and by 1980 to 33%.  In 1980 the total on-budget debt stood at $909 billion.  But then the spending spree began in earnest.  At the end of the 102^nd Congress in 1992, the total on-budget debt had climbed to $4 trillion and to 64% of GDP.  Today, it is $9.6 trillion (66% of GDP, twice the percentage in 1980) and will break the $10 trillion barrier in early 2009.

          Those are the facts today.  What about tomorrow?  The current budget deficit for the year ending September 30 adds another $410 billion to that on-budget debt.  Walker expects these deficit numbers to continue through several more congresses.  By 2015, if nothing changes, Social Security will begin to pay out more than it takes in, as 10,000 “baby boomers” a day become eligible for New (Old?) Deal retirement benefits.  And, of course, “entitlement” programs are driving this fiscal crisis, as they constitute what is called the “non-discretionary” part of the budget.  Congressman Hensarling may be the point man fighting “earmarks,” but they represent a mere 1% of the spending problem.  However, by 2030, everything will be a whole lot simpler; if spending trends continue, the 121^st Congress will only have to debate four appropriations bills: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the federal debt.  There will be zero funds available for any other function of government.  By 2040, the on-budget federal debt will have traveled farther than any NASA mission, rocketing to 244% of GDP (compare that to 1945).  Walker has added up all the promises past Congresses have made and says that the total on-budget liability of the U.S. government today is $53 trillion.  How much money has been set aside to pay for this?  Zero, zip, nada.  As Walker states, “We cannot afford the promises we’ve already made.”

          Can you keep a secret?  Don’t tell Obama or McCain.  But, according to I.O.U.S.A., there are only two ways to cure this “fiscal cancer.”  Cut spending and/or raise taxes.  In order to cover that $53 trillion shortfall, the overall tax burden on the average American would have to double.  This brings me to the leadership crisis.  Have you heard any politician from Federal City propose significant cuts to Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid or significant increases to your tax load?  That’s what I thought.  (There actually is a third way.  The bankers could monetize the debt by inflating the currency; if you’re complaining about energy and grocery prices today … oh boy!)

          There is actually a fifth crisis that I.O.U.S.A. does not mention, perhaps because its producers don’t want to offend their audience, however infinitesimal it may be.  The fifth crisis is a crisis in citizenship.  When the Fiscal WakeUp Tour traveled to New Hampshire, a WMUR reporter was sent to cover the event.  The reporter told Bixby that it probably would air somewhere in the middle of that evening’s 30-minute newscast.  Instead, WMUR’s editors went with a story about a man who stole a diamond ring and swallowed it in front of police.  WMUR knows the kind of news its audience doesn’t want to hear. At a town hall meeting broadcast live from Omaha, Nebraska (home of Warren Buffet, one of the panelists), Bixby said that people understand the four deficits presented in the film and that “they are looking for solutions from their elected leaders.”  Therein lies the real crisis facing America: the near total abandonment of the art of self-government.  In a constitutional republic, the citizens are the leaders, and congressmen are their agents.  I.O.U.S.A. (www.iousathemovie.com) is an entertainingly informative documentary that will give citizen-leaders the facts and figures they need to instruct their representatives.  But please don’t go to see the film because I discovered that while I was sitting there scared in the dark for the 87-minutes, the national debt shot up another $85 million.  To plagiarize from another recent film, I can only say to those punks in line for Hamlet 2, good night and good luck.

Jeff Turner is a Dallas lawyer and a fellow in constitutional studies at the College of St. Thomas More in Fort Worth. 

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