The Nation's Fiscal Challenge

David M. Walker, the U.S. comptroller general, discussed America's spending/saving/payment problems during a September 14, 2007, panel at The Commonwealth Club of California. The panel was part of a bipartisan Fiscal Wake-Up Tour.

Sobering stuff, this. I appreciated the fact that there were bipartisan views on the panel -- joining Walker was Alison Acosta Fraser from the conservative Heritage Foundation and Isabel V. Sawhill of the liberal Brookings Institution (and a former Clinton administration budget official). Both parties got us into this mess, and most Americans have participated in trying to vote ourselves rich.

And our children and grandchildren will rue the day they ever let us borrow the national credit card and hit the mall.