The players in this election season are, it seems, not interested in talking about the deficit. Too much of a downer. Still, when the giddy days and nights of campaigning are done and the cold grey dawn of governing breaks, someone is going to have to face the facts. Namely, that spending is increasing at a rate of 5 percent per year, and revenues at 1 percent.

What makes the problem a real challenge is the fact that the spending is being driven by what we like to call “entitlements," to include Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare.

As IBD reports,

Over the next decade, spending on these programs will jump almost 70%. Federal spending on health care programs will rocket up 81% over those years, topping $2 trillion in 2026 and accounting for about a third of all federal spending.

And

As the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] has long explained, the massive debt the nation is on track to accumulate poses risks to the economy, productivity, wages, the nation's capital stock and increases the likelihood of a fiscal crisis.

Which will come as a huge shock that no one saw coming.

The last such shock was caused by people incentivized by the government into buying houses they could not afford. This one will be caused by the same government (run by the political class) giving people things to which it has told them they are entitled.

But don't worry, the government and the political class will be there to fix things.