Truth? You can't handle the truth! A $53 trillion dollar debt.

On a regular basis, Americans are at war with their Congressional representatives. Innocently, we expect them to maintain the standards they are sworn to, to support the Constitution of the United States, and to wisely use their office to serve their constituents.

Unfortunately, they continually disappoint us. Like Col. Jessup in A Few Good Men, our Congress has deluded themselves and us. They hide the truth from us, and from themselves, in a vain attempt to make us feel better.

But, we know better. Everyone knows our country is in trouble. Currently the problem is fixable, but like AIG or Lehman Brothers, our country is seriously overdrawn in the checkbook.

Do you ever have that feeling of fear deep in the pit of your stomach when someone tells you the truth? I have. I've had it several times. I had it the day my uncle called me to tell me my mom had died. I had it the day my husband called me at work to tell me he had a tumor the size of his football hidden between his organs. Well, I have that fear right now for our country. Although we are hearing bits and pieces, we are not hearing the whole story.

Life throws us some curves, doesn't it? And right now, life is throwing the United States some curves. The reason people are grasping onto their Presidential candidate like a drowning person to a lifeline is because they know something's wrong. Congress is ignoring their one digit approval rating and going about business as usual. They will not acknowledge that they and their predecessors have been "cooking the books" of the United Sates for some time. Like people with too many credit cards who don't have any money left in their savings accounts, they are charging like crazy. It's easier to deny, deny, deny, than to address it.

This past year, the Fed has been bailing out various large corporations who made bad business decisions due to their stupidity and greed. The obvious ones are Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG. The Fed has also been lending money to various mortgage brokers, banks and investment houses.

You'd think that everything is right with the world, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. According to agorafinancial.com, on May 22nd, the Federal Reserve handed out $46 billion to U.S. Investment Banks in exchange for unwanted mortgage and asset-backed securities. And some of these big brokerages have dumped around $160 billion of these securities on the Fed since March. Then, the Fed doled out another $75 billion in short-term loans to banks. Before this past week, illiquid collateralized debt obligations totalled in excess of 20% of the collateral backing Federal Reserve Notes.

Then, yesterday, to stem the inevitable, the Fed loaned $80 billion to AIG. Did they check the financial statements of AIG? Did they make sure that AIG could pay back this loan at some future date? Or, did they just keep a lousy, insolvent company in business for a little while longer while the CEO continues to make his millions?

The Fed knows something, or thinks it knows something. It thinks that in order to keep the United States from going belly up it must shore up these corporations. It is doing a dangerous balancing act trying to keep the scales from tipping.

Last night on Glenn Beck, Glenn said the total amount of write-downs announced so far was $200 billion. The entire U.S. economy is $14.1 trillion. The approximate size of our bill for Social Security and Medicare is $53 trillion (that's according to the General Accounting Office of the U.S.). Imagine. This doesn't include any other part of government and already we are way out of our league in debt.

From 2000 to 2005, the federal debt went from $20 trillion to $46 trillion and is increasing exponentially. Glenn goes on to state, "former Comptroller General of the United States David Walker tries a different tactic. He writes that our unfunded promises translate into "an IOU of around $455,000 per American household."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/26/beck.deficit/index.html

Pardon me. I don't know about you, but I don't have the kind of money on me. Check your pockets, please. You got some change for the Fed?

In the meantime, it's business as usual in Washington. Our representatives are walking around with their heads in the clouds and blaming each other for who knows what. Presidential hopeful Senator Obama wants universal health care, a tax decrease for 95% of us, and a civilian work force greater than the military. Candidates are arguing about absurdness rather than speaking responsibly about our greatest threat; the demise of the United State of America if we don't address our debt immediately.

To get us back on track is going to take a lot of work on the part of the American people. We need to force this issue. We need to write to our Congressman, Senators and the Presidential candidates. In order to keep our country going, to maintain our way of life, our ideals, our hopes and dreams, we need to address this issue now, not later. Now!