In 1981, America's accumulated public debt first crossed over the $1 trillion dollar mark, to which America's GDP at that point was $6.59 trillion, or a ratio of GDP to accumulative debt to be about 6.5:1. America, has not had a surplus fiscal budget since 2001, and in the four years of 2009-2012, ran a deficit amount of over $1 trillion dollars in each of those respective years, so that at the present time, our federal accumulated deficit is estimated by usgovernmentspending.com to be at $19,199,207,411,000, of which none of that deficit amount takes into account unfunded liabilities to entitlement programs such as Medicare or Social Security, and America's annual GDP is currently estimated to be at $17,419 trillion or a ratio of GDP to accumulative debt to be about a troubling .907:1, with all this happening in less than two generations.
This type of historic shift to which the accumulative deficit now exceeds the GDP of this great country, as well as the fact that this deficit has picked up an enormous amount of momentum since the turn of the century, basically only indicates one fundamental thing and that is that this government has no intention whatsoever of ever making good on this debt. We know this because this nation has not been in any Congressional declared war, although it has been at war, since World War II, in addition to the fact that America has not suffered the economic woes of the Great Depression, although it has been in a great recession. The problem that the American federal government has is basically that they want or demand both "guns and butter" to satisfy both major parties and they don't have the resolve to force the taxpayers to pay for it all.
The basic reason why taxpayers aren't stuck making good on all these deficits is not because the middle case or median paid worker isn't paying enough or their fair share in taxes, because they basically are, but because so many multi-national corporations as well as sophisticated, powerfully connected, and elite rich people aren't paying their appropriate share, but even if all were being taxed fairly, this country would still be running significant deficits, that would still be unsustainable, but not as extreme as they have been over this last generation.
The real issue with this ever growing deficit is the fact that America keeps postponing till tomorrow what it needs to address today, and will not make the cuts necessary in their budget, nor close the loopholes in the tax system to amend these problems, and all that, at best, would perhaps just stop the rot, but do little, if anything to knock down the actual deficit. When you live in a country to which nobody ever wants their policy budget to be cut, but instead demands or requests more, and further that in this country, nobody wants to pay any more than necessary to the tax man, as even that is too much, and further when you have feckless politicians that just pander to the crowd, and say one thing while doing the exact opposite, than you are dealing with a country that fundamentally is dishonest, imprudent, and a poor steward of its people's money and governance.
The bottom line is that you wouldn't keep loaning money to a "friend" if he didn't even try to pay you back, and his monetary requests kept getting larger, and he kept postponing paying you back, and he spent your money on wine, woman, and song; you would, at some point have to cut him off. The party in America keeps going on and on and on, the lies keep growing, but the train long ago left the station, and the people if not of this present generation, than of future generations, will pay for the sins and malfeasance of their fathers.