Federal, state debt is causing crisis

Social Security is in crisis. The government doesn't use accounting principles the way business, by law, has to. If it did, the balance sheet would show the government should be filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

According to the Federal Reserve, the federal government is $14 trillion in debt. State and local governments are close to $3 trillion in debt.

Practically every state is poised to run out of pension funds in 10 years. What the states have been doing is borrowing pension fund money to hide government borrowing - borrowing off the books.

Social Security is even worse. In order to fund Social Security, the government would need approximately $106 trillion, invested at 6 percent, to pay the obligations of Social Security and Medicare. The problem is, we are somewhere in the neighborhood of $106 trillion short.

Those Treasury bonds in the lockbox are worth nothing. All the bonds are worth are IOUs - what you give someone when you have no money. I'd call that a crisis.

Mark O'Connell

Cedar Rapids