What's the Fuss?

The U.S. House of Representatives passes the health care bill. What's the problem? We're the richest and most powerful economy in the world. Certainly we can afford to help everyone get the medical care they need. Right?

Actually not. Take a look at The U.S. Debt Clock. This handy little page includes convenient boxes listing the U.S. National Debt (currently approaching $12 trillion) and the number of U.S. Taxpayers (currently about 108 million). But the real kicker is the total U.S. Unfunded Liabilities. This is the amount of future obligations for Social Security and Medicare which the U.S. government has taken responsibility for, but does not have the ANY money set aside to cover (hence the term "unfunded").

Folks, the current U.S. Unfunded Liabilities is a whopping $106 trillion. Yes, that's "trillion" with a 'T'. That future obligation represents a knee-buckling $1,000,000 per taxpayer. This is madness. The current total national assets is only $74 trillion. So we are already obligated 50% above our current assets.

And it's in this sort of economic situation that our Representatives in Washington have voted to saddle U.S. taxpayers to even more trillions in obligations. We are promising benefits which cannot be delivered while simultaneously burdening future generations with expenditures they cannot afford.