After the ball is over, after the break of morn,

After the dancers’ leaving, after the stars are gone,

Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all …

— Lyrics from the

most-popular song of the 1890s

The party is indeed over. The United States cannot continue to finance trillion-dollar deficits for decades. Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University and Carmen Reinhard of the University of California wrote an article, “Growth in a Time of Debt,” arguing that, historically, advanced economies’ growth rates declined when their debt-to-Gross Domestic Product ratio exceeded 90 percent.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, total debt (not just the publicly held portion) was 83 percent in 2009 and will exceed 100 percent by 2012. The OBM’s calculations understate our fiscal dilemma. It did not include:

The $5 trillion liabilities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because these government sponsored entities are not explicit U.S. guarantees.

The $53 trillion unfunded liabilities of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

The real U.S. deficit is about five times our GNP.

Rogoff and Reinhard worry that bringing down our deficits will require unprecedented measures. They believe we cannot easily cut our budget expenses or expand our revenues because of lackluster expectations about job growth.

And we can’t just keep borrowing. According to a Jan. 19 Treasury/Federal Reserve report, the four major holders of U.S. debt are:

1.China, $789 billion

2.Japan, $757 billion

3.United Kingdom, $277 billion

4.Oil exporters, of which Saudi Arabia is No. 1, $187 billion.

These countries could lose their confidence in our ability to repay them. They also lack the saving capacity to finance our ongoing trillion-dollar deficits. According to the 2009 CIA World Fact Book, the GDPs of these countries are estimated to be:

1.China, $4.7 trillion.

2.Japan, $4.9 trillion.

3.United Kingdom, $2.7 trillion.

4.Saudi Arabia, $379 billion.

A New York Times article, “Cut, Snip, Slash, the Deficit is a Hardy Survivor,” published Feb. 7, clearly presented the formidable problem.

Even if we eliminated all of the following budget items, we would still have a deficit in 2011: National Endowment for the Arts; congressional earmarks; welfare payments; foreign aid; the Department of Education; money for war operations; the Recovery Act’s stimulus spending; Medicaid benefits for poor patients and nursing home residents; Medicare benefits; all domestic programs other than entitlements; Social Security checks for retirees, the disabled and survivors; and all national security spending.

The biggest and fastest-growing share of the budget still goes for mandatory entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — and interest payment on the national debt.

U.S. legislators have learned only half of John Maynard Keynes’ economic prescriptions. The British economist advocated deficit spending during lean economic times and government surpluses during robust economic times.

When should we deal with the deficit? As soon as we are assured that we will not have another major economic decline.

Both political parties have contributed to the deficit. Everybody drank the same Kool-Aid. Nobody paid for it.

The Right must recognize that we cannot eliminate all the social programs initiated since the 1930s and we cannot afford annually to spend 50 percent of the world’s total military expenditures — 33 times more than either Russia or China.

The Left must recognize that all Americans need to be taxed, not just the wealthiest. Currently, the top 10 percent of our income earners pay 70 percent of all income taxes.

In order to obtain higher revenues, we must seriously consider a national sales tax.

Rich Lowry of the National Review described the downside of Uncle Sam gorging at a banquet: “The federal government follows not far behind on the kind of diet geese enjoy prior to becoming foie gras.”

Originally published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune