If you are a high school senior ...

If you are a high school senior today, you should be interested in the chart shown at the bottom of this posting. It depicts the distribution of the debt of the Federal Government out to the point where you will be a twenty-five year old young man or woman in the early stages of your lifetime of work.

In a 538 Blog, authored by Nate Silver, the will of the American people is spelled out regarding preferences for attacking the country's debt.

Mr. Silver's chart based on a recent Gallop poll clearly demonstrates the will of the people. Americans believe that a split of approximately 65% cuts and 35% revenue (tax) increases is the appropriate mix for the debt reduction plan.

Republicans taken alone believe the split should be 74% cuts and 26% revenue increases.

The President has offered an 80-20 (cuts to revenue) plan that Republican Congressional leaders reject arguing that their colleagues in the House of Representatives will not vote for one dollar of revenue in any compromise plan.

Given the chart shown to the left, it is little wonder why the Republican leaders make such statements. The Republican majority in the House stems from a 2010 election in which many independents and Democratic voters failed to vote. Consequently, the field was left open to the right-leaning and right-wing electorate. Unfortunately, the Tea Party, right wing evangelicals and other extremest groups dominated the election.

Approximately eighty-five House members came from the far right movement in the Republican Party. These eighty-five of the 435 members of the House of Representatives have the power to block any compromise that the Republican Party might otherwise pursue.

If the Party is unable to compromise on legislation with the Democratic minority in the House, no legislation can get through. The debt ceiling extension is stuck in that political no-mans-land as we speak.

Obviously, the no-compromise adherents to the Republican right ideology that now populate the Republican side of the aisle of the US House of Representatives have been pushed over the edge into the abyss. Their constituencies will not allow them to compromise.

The more liberal Republican House members who otherwise would be open to compromise are now running scared. They are threatened by the Tea Party and their lobbyist overlords that any move to compromise will lead to a primary challenger in their next election cycle. The Tea Party minority of the Republican Party has forced grid-lock in their party caucus. This Tea Party intransigence within their Party is shutting down the federal government.

Given current trends, it is inevitable that by 2019, the national debt will expand to a minimum of approximately $17.3 trillion. That is your debt and my debt; the debt of our children and grandchildren; their children and grandchildren.

This chart from an article by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post depicts the Congressional Budget Office projections for the debt distribution out to 2019. As is plainly evident, the Bush Tax Cuts of the early two thousands, the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the recession that began in 2008 are the major contributors to our long term debt. So the Rights' answer to this American problem is to leave the Bush tax cuts in place, continue the wars, cut off any government programs that invest in job creation, and of course stamp-out any program in place that benefits the poor, the elderly, students and other groups too vulnerable to fight back and already suffering the economic pain inflicted in the last ten years.

Unfortunately, it isn't election day. For if it were, America would solve the debt issue by the time polls closed at the end of the day.