The national debt and the quote for the day

When asked if he would co-chair President Obama's debt reduction commission, former Republican Senator Alan Simpson from Wyoming had this to say:

“I’ll just say I’m very frustrated and I can’t believe what’s happening to our country.”

“There isn’t a single sitting member of Congress, not one, that doesn’t know exactly where we’re headed,” Mr. Simpson continued. “And to use the politics of fear and division and hate on each other–we are at a point right now where it doesn’t make a damn whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican if you’ve forgotten you’re an American.”

Meanwhile, Washington is mired in the worst gridlock I've ever seen, with Democratic Senator Evan Bayh announcing yesterday his decision to not run for re-election (comments from James Fallows here):

“For some time, I have had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should,” Mr. Bayh said. “There is too much partisanship and not enough progress — too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous challenge, the people’s business is not being done.”

Can Congress rise to the challenge?

After decades of warnings that budgetary profligacy, escalating health care costs and an aging population would lead to a day of fiscal reckoning, economists and the nation’s foreign creditors say that moment is approaching faster than expected, hastened by a deep recession that cost trillions of dollars in lost tax revenues and higher spending for safety-net programs.

Yet rarely has the political system seemed more polarized and less able to solve big problems that involve trust, tough choices and little short-term gain. The main urgency for both parties seems to be about pinning blame on the other, before November’s elections, for deficits now averaging $1 trillion a year, the largest since World War II relative to the size of the economy....

“I used to think it would take a global financial crisis to get both parties to the table, but we just had one,” said G. William Hoagland, who was a fiscal policy adviser to Senate Republican leaders and a witness to past bipartisan budget summits. “These days I wonder if this country is even governable.”

The Washington Times analyzes some of Obama's claims on the budget deficit here. Meanwhile, the numbers keep ticking upwards on the U.S. Debt Clock. I haven't read all the details of the Ryan Plan, but maybe we need some such paradigm shift...