The problems are tremendous.

We need to get back to sound money, reduce leverage, and learn to live within our means. That means we can only spend what we are willing to pay for today. Not in 5 or 10 or 20 years from now.  Whatever we collect in taxes and revenues today is all we can spend period. The huge medical spending is what is driving the explosion of spending you cannot have medical spending growing at 9% annually like it has for almost the last 30 years. The medical monopoly and protections must be removed so you know up front what a MRI or X ray costs. There needs to be competition there just like every other industry. That is hugely unpopular and the screams will be deafening about how that cannot be done. 

Had we addressed the economic problems in around 2000 somewhere around a 20% reduction in spending would have been needed.  After the Bear Stearns /Lehman we were in the 30-35 % reduction range needed.

Now we would need almost a 50% reduction in all spending across every category and every agency. We have so many sacred cows now that nobody is willing to cut or sacrifice anything . I can almost assure you the final collapse will be far more painful than taking the massive cuts needed today.

We have no real leaders who are willing to sit the petulant children (citizens) down and explain that we are broke. We need real leadership that can have an adult conversation about where we are at and what needs to be done.

Instead we have folks with huge ego's looking to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense. Their votes are for sale to the highest bidder and their is no accountability or ethics in what they do.

They surely know it's unsustainable yet they continue to allow money, greed and power drive them instead of doing what is right for the country and the people. Trying to get theirs while they can and when it all crumbles down act shocked and dismayed and scream "nobody could have seen this coming"

The problem is exponential growth.

A nice visual on this start at 1:48 in with the stadium.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bRc-YfcXVYo

The problem is right up until the very end nothing appears to be very serious but right at the end the shock and realization sets in. That is the problem we are approaching the end quickly now and although things don't look too terrible when the last couple doublings happen it all goes very wrong.

We should have been talking about these issues 10-15-20 years ago when we had time to effect a real and small change that would have altered our course dramatically. Instead like usual we kicked the can down the road to deal with it later.

Today is later  

There are people far smarter than I that have concrete ways of correcting the path we are on but the time is rapidly expiring.