'Gentlemen, we have run out of money; now we have to think'.

• Author: Farrell, Lawrence P., Jr.
• Position: President's Perspective

The quote above is attributed to Sir Winston Churchill. A variation, "We've got no money, so we've got to think," is attributed to the New Zealand physicist, Ernest Rutherford. Both of them have precisely nailed the situation in which the United States finds itself today.

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We see massive deficits in national budget projections. We see a Budget Control Act and a Super Committee in the Congress that make only the faintest stab at closing the gap. We see a national debt piling up an additional $15.3 trillion unfunded liability for entitlements between 2012 and 2021. This is 10 times the Super Committee's debt-reduction target of $1.5 trillion. We see the total deficit during that period of $9.4 trillion, and interest costs in 2021 rising from $168 billion in 2010 to $928 billion in 2021. If projections hold, one can expect a defense budget of $582 billion in 2021. And in 2021, we see discretionary spending at 26 percent of outlays, versus 61 percent for mandatory spending.

These numbers are so staggering that one at first views them in disbelief. How can the country continue along this track? And if these numbers are even close to being right, why does the Budget Control Act set such a low and inadequate deficit reduction target of $2.4 trillion?

Even this paltry target must be a difficult stretch for the Super Committee, as current reports of progress and dueling quotes from panel members are not encouraging.

Meanwhile, folks are nervous. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said that if the "trigger" of the Budget Control Act is activated, it is unacceptable, and will lead to a hollow force. But Panetta also said everything should be on the table. And we know from the language in the Budget Control Act that entitlements--61 percent on present outlays--are clearly "off the table."

The Super Committee must deliver $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions to prevent the sequester from occurring. The difficulty of finding $1.5 trillion seems a trivial exercise when one considers that the United States is set to outlay $40 trillion over the next 10 years.

The Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction proposal delivered a "gift-wrapped" solution to all this last December. Sadly it landed in a "cone of silence," little remarked-upon by either the president or Congress. If the nation had taken it seriously, we might be on the way to a grand solution by now. Unfortunately, we are nowhere, and even if the Super Committee delivers, it will be but...