Borrowing from disaster

It's the single greatest threat to our national security.

If you guessed the Chinese, you're wrong.

Gadhafi? Nope.

Not the Muslim hordes. Not the communists, the United Nations or the most insidious Internet virus of all time.

The single greatest threat to U.S. security is - drumroll, please - us.

You. Me. All of us.

Together, we've spent our nation to the very ledge of catastrophe, a point profoundly pounded home this week during an editorial board meeting with Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican up to his elbows in engaging America to solve its debt crisis.

The greatest threat conclusion isn't just Sen. Crapo's belief, either. That assessment comes from Admiral Mike Mullen. Admiral Mullen is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He's the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Armed Forces and the President's principal military adviser. He also holds an advanced business degree from Harvard.

The depth and breadth of U.S. debt to support uncontrolled spending is beyond the comprehension of most of us. Think of it in these terms:

Every single day our nation borrows almost $4 billion. One billion dollars is $1,000,000,000,000. If you earned $1 million a year, it would take you a thousand years to reach $1 billion. And every day, as a nation, we're borrowing four times that much.

Some of the country's most astute historians and economists have concluded that over the past 200 years, every nation whose debt exceeds 90 percent of its Gross Domestic Product has fallen on desperate times. Our country now faces a debt that's almost 95 percent of our GDP.

Look, we're sorry to sully your Sunday with this massive morale buster, but until we confront the truth and take the difficult steps to contend with it, our complicit role in the unraveling of our nation will only continue.

So what do we do about it? Part of the solution is holding accountable those whose fingers are on the nation's pursestrings. That alone won't solve the problem, though.

The solution starts with all of us. We must be honest with ourselves: This is not a bill that will come due for our children, our grandchildren or our great-grandchildren, as many of us have deluded ourselves into believing. The bill is due and payable now. Failure to make progress immediately poses peril - instant and long-term - to us all.

The solution also assures widespread pain and anxiety. Because cutting the budget by the trillions of dollars necessary will impact virtually every American - through Social Security changes, reduced tax write-offs, entitlement program cutbacks, and much, much more - there will be no happy campers in the land of the free and the home of the brave. If you're lucky enough to own an ox, we guarantee: It will be gored.

As a nation, it's time to stop running from the truth. It's time for communities to meet the needs that state and federal governments have been increasingly counted on to provide, and we emphasize the word "needs." No more crying for Uncle Sam to solve local problems.

The way out is, indeed, the way through.

Buck up and spread the word.