Orrin, basically every politician since President Johnson has promised more to the American people than they can ever cash in. If you account for all national debts (which most people, economists and politicians refuse to do for reasons I am about to make clear) the federal debt is hovering at about $50 Trillion. That is $50,000,000,000,000 if you want to write it out. And that does not include anything Obama and our current congress has done or is planning to do. The problem here is that there is not that much money in the world. Now the politicians can go back on their promises, which none are prepared to do, or they can simply print off that much money and call it good, which it seems is exactly their plan. When they do this, assuming they reign in the spending (doubtful), the debts will be gone and they will look like champions--no debts and all promises fulfilled. The downside is that our dollar then (about ten years should do the trick) will be worth about a penny now. Do the math. That means everything we buy will be 100 times more expensive, but our checks will not increase (historically, the last thing affected by inflation is income and the thing never affected by inflation is fixed income such as social security and retirement accounts). To make it simpler to understand, keep all prices the same as they are now, but your paycheck is cut by a factor of 100. For instance, if you make $25 dollars an hour (about the middle of the average incomes), you now have the same expenses but your income goes to 25 cents an hour. What can you afford? Nothing is the answer. But it is the only solution our government has. They've been doing this since the late 1800's or very early 1900's. It got a boost under FDR, and a huge boost under Johnson. Bush (the latter) gave it a big boost in his last year in office and Obama has promised to double it in the next two years. So far, there is no end in sight. If they control the spending, this idea will get all their promises fulfilled and get us out of debt at the same time. However, I've never in my life seen government control spending. This is the tip of the iceburg--nah, this is us running into Antarctica at full speed cheering the Captain of the ship on thinking the whole continent will gladly move out of our way. Let's put up some reality here. Keynesianism has never worked and has only made rich countries poor. It's time to put that failed economic theory to rest at long last.