I can hardly wait for the charts and graphs to show up . . . again . . .

Honestly, I don't think it's "news" that the US has a large government debt. It's been in all the news. What hasn't been in the news is whether Americans are socially and politically ready to work on debt reduction in a reasonable manner. For those that throw around the concept of "austerity" . . . what form of austerity are you specifically talking about, since we already have recent history of austerity not being particularly effective in other parts of the world. Should we be Sweden, and is that even remotely possible?