Just ask David Walker, former head of the Government Accountability Office – and my fiscal hero.

Our off balance sheet obligations associated with Social Security and Medicare put us in a $56 trillion financial hole—and that’s before the recession was officially declared last year. America now owes more than Americans are worth—and the gap is growing!

Things are so bad, Mr. Walker left “last year with a third of his 15-year term left because “there are practical limits on what one can—and cannot—do in that job.”" Yeah… that means he wasn’t able to speak candidly as GAO head because of pressure from corrupt politicians like, say, Barney Frank.

Our $56 trillion in unfunded obligations amount to $483,000 per household. That’s 10 times the median household income—so it’s as if everyone had a second or third mortgage on a house equal to 10 times their income but no house they can lay claim to.” As for this year’s likely deficit of $1.8 trillion, Mr. Walker suggests its size be conveyed thusly: “A deficit that large is $3.4 million a minute, $200 million an hour, $5 billion a day

For those of you that gloss over when hearing numbers:

Says Mr. Walker, “If we don’t get our fiscal house in order, but create new obligations we’ll have a Thelma and Louise moment where we go over the cliff.”

Those “new obligations” would be the free-enterprise-destroying Waxman Cap & Trade bill and the Socialist takeover of our health care system.