A couple of recent reports illustrate just how dire the United States federal government's debt situation really is.
The federal government took in a record $2.9 trillion in tax revenues for the first 11 months of the fiscal year (through the end of August), up about 7.4 percent from the same period the year before. Using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, CNS News calculated that this translates to approximately $19,346 for every person in the country who had a full-time or part-time job. Yet, even these record revenues could not satisfy the government's insatiable spending, which totaled $3.4 trillion during the period, resulting in a deficit of $530 billion.
Like most people who grew up in suburban Boston, I am not a gun person. I've never owned one. I've never even held at handgun. I've never been a member of the NRA. Yet here I am, sitting down to write a column preemptively defending Congress for its coming "failure" to respond to President Obama's most recent call to "do something" in response to the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon and the other tragic mass shootings that have become sickeningly common over the past few years.
Here is the reality: Congress, imperfectly at times, generally reflects the will of the people. You, fellow denizens of the Acela corridor whose familiarity with guns is limited to TV and movies, are not representative of the rest of the country. The country doesn't want to take the most commonly suggested actions proposed to prevent mass shootings, and with good reason.
