In many respects things are going quite well in the U.S. at the present time:
- The economy is chugging along at 2% annual growth, not spectacular but better than in most other developed countries. In fact a rather severe labor shortage is developing in some industries such as construction and agriculture. More specialized guest worker visas would help relieve these shortages. Better career and vocational education in high school as well as targeted job retraining programs for the underemployed would help prepare workers for the millions of high-skill manufacturing jobs going unfilled.
- Pesky foreign policy problems are under control. ISIS is being squeezed in the Middle East. China appears willing to help contain the North Korean nuclear threat. Iran is mostly abiding by the 2015 nuclear agreement.
- Congress is inching its way towards resolution of the healthcare stalemate, by repairing Obamacare rather than repealing it. It’s not clear how much tax reform will be implemented this session but there is at least a consensus on lowering the corporate tax rate to encourage multinational companies to bring their profits back home.
- Deregulation efforts by the Trump Administration will give the economy at least a small beneficial boost.
But there is one huge problem which is constantly being swept under the rug or being kicked down the road by both parties in Congress and by Democratic as well as Republican presidential administrations alike. I am referring, of course, to our massive national debt, now sitting at 77% of GDP (and growing) for the public part on which we pay interest. Right now this debt is essentially “free” money because interest rates are so low. But it’s really a ticking time bomb because sooner or later interest rates will return to more normal levels and then interest payments will skyrocket causing a huge fiscal crisis.
Conclusion. It is imperative for Congress to reform entitlement programs to make them less costly to the federal budget and to otherwise restrain discretionary federal spending across the board. The future of our country depends on our national leaders exercising much greater fiscal restraint. They need to get much better at doing this!
It Does Not Add Up 
So you want to gut social security and Medicare so that retirees have even less in the future?
I want to save SS and Medicare by getting our fiscal house in order. Otherwise our fiscal extravagance will kill these programs.
No it won’t. The US government issues the $US. It can’t be bankrupted.
You’re selling scare stories to the masses on behalf of the rich Wall St creeps who want to steal the retirement funds of American labour.
The Federal Reserve can’t solve our debt problem. Too much loose money will eventually cause hyperinflation. The only solution is to get our fiscal house in order, i.e. to greatly shrink our annual deficits.