We’re in a fiscal crisis.  We all know it.

Federal government revenues and expenditures are out of balance and as a result we’re running enormous and unsustainable deficits.  If the rest of the world should decide one day that lending to the United States is a risky bet, interest rates will sky rocket, businesses will cut back or close unable to afford to borrow or pay off existing loans, unemployment will rise rapidly, and deficits will soar as tax revenues plummet and expenditures for debt service and for social services rise dramatically – leading to even higher interest rates, and worse unemployment, and even larger annual deficits – and a spiral downward that will be next to impossible to break.

We’re in a very precarious situation because our financial house is not ‘in order’, yet fortunately the rest of the world is lending us money at record low rates.

So with this scary but very lucky ‘low interest rate’ reality, what do our politicians do?

Republicans actually spook the rest of the world intentionally by playing chicken with the debt ceiling.  Imagine, they actually drive the United States towards default of its debt obligations to our lenders.

And Democrats act irresponsibly by appearing to be in denial about the seriousness of our fiscal situation, failing to put forward and embrace a thoughtful, substantive fiscal plan that includes significant expense reductions in entitlement spending.

But worst of all, because it is an election year both parties have abandoned all serious attempts to accomplish anything substantive this year.  Republicans pass bills in the House knowing they will never pass the Senate, while Senate Democrats try to move legislation forward that they know will be killed by Senate Republicans.  Both sides posture in order to have campaign slogans and have the ability to point and blame the other side, and in the meantime the Republic is failing. They don’t even have the courtesy to pretend to lock themselves in round the clock, all night sessions, for a solid month, trying to hammer out a ‘grand bargain’ in order to begin to responsibly address this crisis.

Nero Fiddles While Rome Burns.

President Obama, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reed, Mitch McConnell, together with Mitt Romney to avoid political advantage – all need to put country first and come together as a group and solve this problem.  Serious expense reductions need to be on the table in social programs, in military spending, in all aspects of government operations.  Tax rates need to be on the table, as well as tax policy and the closing of tax loopholes. Investments in infrastructure that make us more competitive over the next 100 years need to be on the table, as do investments in new technologies that will spawn new industries and provide the jobs of the future.

A combination of serious expense reductions, targeted tax increases, closing tax loopholes, strategic investments is the way forward.

And as soon as they come to a deal, our markets will explode as confidence in our fiscal future rises.

Americans know it, and it’s time our political leaders stopped fiddling.