Obama's Deficits Will Cause Taxes to Rise for Everybody

No surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, but for the rainbows and unicorns crowd this might be a little hard to take:

A $9 trillion federal deficit over 10 years may be too hard to comprehend. But this part is easy: Such unwieldy amounts of debt could have an impact on Americans' bottom line one way or the other -- if not tomorrow, then the day after.

The U.S. government has been spending a great deal more than it has been taking in, and it is on track to do so well beyond the next 10 years. It has been borrowing money to make all that spending possible and it has to pay the money back with interest. How, you ask? By borrowing more.

The solution is straightforward if unpleasant: Shy of finding a fairy willing to leave trillions under Uncle Sam's pillow, lawmakers will have to raise taxes and cut spending.

The more the country lives on a credit card, the more it makes itself beholden to the demands of its creditors -- many of which are overseas. The danger is that buyers of U.S. debt could become concerned that the country is running too high a balance. If so, they will demand higher interest rates -- thereby making the country's debt problem worse -- or they'll put their money elsewhere.

At that point, things would get ugly.

"Taxes would rise to levels that would make a Scandinavian revolt. And the government would not be able to provide anything but the most basic public services. We would no longer be a great power (or even a mediocre one), and the social safety net would evaporate," tax policy expert and Syracuse University professor Len Burman wrote in a recent op-ed cheerfully titled "Catastrophic Budget Failure."

That's why acting sooner rather than later makes sense. But acting too soon could cause its own set of problems since the economy is only beginning to lick its wounds from a punishing recession.

Economists and tax experts, no matter their ideological position, agree raising taxes when the economy is down is self-defeating.

But as the economy finds a solid footing, the hard choices will have to be made.

"We need to do this in stages at the right time," said David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, in a CNNMoney.com video.

Right now there is a lot of talk, but not a lot of planning, about how to address the situation.

In fact, President Obama is pledging to keep taxes low for most people....

Experts say that's not going to cut it.

"Taxes are going up and they're going up for a lot more people than those making more than $250,000. Why? Math. The numbers don't come close to working," Walker said.

And that's not coming from a right-wing crackpot website, it's coming from CNN, left-wing crackpot website.

Get our your wallets, folks. Rainbows and unicorns don't come cheap.