Imagine if, in your personal life, you ran a budget deficit for 18 consecutive months.  Or, imagine if you owned a business, and you ran a budget deficit for 18 straight months. 

In either scenario, you wouldn't survive.  Your family would suffer, your employees would suffer, and you'd be caught in the grip of punishing financial hardship. 

For the last 10 years, America has not produced a balanced budget.  Bush and a Republican Congress couldn't balance it, Bush and a Democratic Congress couldn't balance it, and so far, Obama and a Democratic Congress aren't even close.  In fact, the nonpartisan CBO projects budget deficits for the next ten years.

It doesn't take a financial genius to comprehend that 18 consecutive months of budget deficits (and counting) is an unsustainable path, a path toward certain financial destruction.  It is a path toward higher interest rates, higher consumer prices, mediocre economic growth, and a lower standard of living for all Americans.  It may even be a path toward a catastrophic Dollar collapse as some experts are warning.

Unless this course is reversed, America will drown in a sea of debt.  It's not a matter of if, but when.  It's just good, old-fashioned common sense.  No PhDs or Wall St. gurus are required to put 2 and 2 together on this one.

But, with the emergence of the Tea Party, Coffee Party, Liberty movement, and Independent movement, perhaps 2010 and 2012 will right the ship and save our nation from financial calamity.