Before our failure to prevent 9/11, which led to wars in Iraq and America’s longest war ever in Afghanistan, America was able to pay its bills. We had a balanced budget, thanks to former President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress. So, I ask, is Osama bin Laden actually winning today in his quest to bankrupt America?

Here is a fact: We have had to borrow money to pay the nation’s bills for the entire 21st century. When we cannot pay our bills, this means we are in a financial crisis, no matter how you sugarcoat it.

For 25 years our politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, have been ignoring the big elephant in the room. We simply do not have the money anymore. We have to borrow money – and go into further debt as a nation – to pay our bills. We have not balanced our budget in the 21st century. Could you get away with not doing that in your home for decades? It is not fiscally

sustainable.

When I was elected to Congress in 1990 our national debt stood at $3.23 trillion. When we started the new century, it ballooned to $5.6 trillion. And today we are at a whopping $38 trillion. This is due solely to the bad decisions of our elected officials, an unwillingness to do hard things, incompetence, lack of courage, and a “kick-the-can-down-the-road” approach to governing.

The service on our debt today is a staggering $1 trillion. That is about as large as our entire defense budget – which is amazing. That amount is up to 20% of our budget and is growing rapidly.

We have an economic crisis on the individual level as well. The number of bankruptcies in the last 12 months has increased to a record level. In December alone it was up more than 21% from the previous December. Overall, bankruptcies were up 14% over the prior year. Then we have the ever-increasing level of household debt that Americans are holding – which sits at nearly $19 trillion, up over 10% from the prior year.

Even worse, we have around 800,000 homeless people. This number is more than the population of Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming, North Dakota and Washington, DC.

What has to be remembered was the goal of Osama bin Laden when he stated in a radio interview in 2004 that he wanted to bankrupt America as he anticipated the U.S. overreacting to the 9/11 attacks – an overreaction that would sap its financial power.

If allowed to continue to grow unchecked, our debt problem would grant Bin Laden his wish: an insolvent United States of America.

We must take our annual federal budget deficits and national debt more seriously.