John,

I don't think anyone in a position to start us down the correct path to recovery has the nerve or stomach to do it. That means the TPTB are either:

1) So dumb or complicit  that they don't understand what is happening or just don't realize how severe of trouble we are actually in (which is totally possible)

2) Know how serious the problem is but would rather kick the can down the road and hope it blows up after they have gotten theirs and they have gotten the heck out of Dodge before it goes ka blooey. If it does blow up on their watch they will simply hold a press conference and tell the dumbed down masses "nobody could have seen this coming" and most will believe it .

Around 1999 -2000 you were looking at about a 10% reduction in govt. size and it's spending to put things into balance and begin a recovery. By the crisis in 2007-2008 you were around a 30-35 % reduction needed. Today we need about a 50% reduction in govt size and spending to balance things out to begin getting things in order. They can't even make 100 billion in cuts without wailing about the draconian magnitude of cuts even after spreading that out for 10 years.

We need to cut at least 1 trillion dollars this year. 1 trillion more next year and whatever is necessary to get to balance in the 3rd year. Will it crash the economy  ? probably but lets take the pain and get it over and start recovering. This dragging it out longer and longer only makes the pain more intense and when things come to a sudden stop  its also how you can lose your representative form of govt. At that point you can either get a George Washington or an Adolf. Getting a George has about a 1 out of 10 odds when you go back through history and look how humankind has fared when we keep having to re- learn the same difficult lessons on monetary policy. 

Then you have folks like Ryan that think we can grow our way out of the problem. That is not going to work either.

Here is a good article and some excellent charts showing how long this has been going on.