What if we all spent like the federal government?

Say you're the average Red Willow County resident, making about $25,000 a year. You spend every penny you make this year, plus another $11,500 you've borrowed. You plan to keep that up for the forseeable future.

It's obvious that you couldn't keep it up for long, but that's just what the federal government is doing.

Blaming the deficits "in large part by the economic crisis inherited by this administration," the White House added an estimated $89 billion to the 2009 deficit projection, pushing it past $1.8 trillion and more than four times last year's all-time high.

Under President Obama's plan, the government would borrow 46 cents for every dollar it takes to run the government this year, and 35 cents next year.

As a percentage of the economy, the deficit would be 12.9 percent of gross domestic product this year, the biggest since World War II.

The White House's recommended budgets project annual deficits of at least $500 billion each year through 2019, piling up $7.1 trillion in additional debt.

In contrast, Obama touted plans to cut $17 billion in wasteful or duplicative programs from the budget last year. As a reminder, it takes a thousand billion to make a trillion, and the $17 billion in cuts is only a fifth of the amount of deficit growth that was announced Monday.

If the average Red Willow County resident managed his budget the way the federal government did, it wouldn't be long before utilities, taxes, mortgage holders or credit card bills would force him into bankruptcy.

How can we expect any more from the current American fiscal fiasco?