"We just can't afford it!"

Not long ago, every America child heard that, at one time or another, in the home in which he or she was raised.

"We just can't afford it!" It may have been a new car, or two weeks at the beach, or the new flat-panel TV screen.

Every family knew there were times you had to do without. Every father and mother has had to disappoint their kids with those words. Why is it that what parents do many times a year politicians seem incapable of doing: saying no.

How many times in the last decade have the political leaders of either party stood up and declared, "No, we cannot afford this."

Consider. Friday, the White House conceded that the deficits over the next 10 years will total $2 trillion more than they had reported just months ago. Instead of $7.1 trillion, we will run $9 trillion in deficits.

Meanwhile, the White House demands a new entitlement -- health care coverage for 47 million uninsured who can't afford it or refuse to buy it -- that will cost at least $1 trillion over 10 years. Can we afford this -- now?

"We can't afford not to," comes the retort. This is "a core ethical and moral obligation," says Barack Obama.

But is it not a core ethical and moral obligation not to debauch the currency in which most of the hard-earned wealth of the American people is invested? Yet, as Warren Buffett writes in The New York Times, collapse of the dollar and the end of its days as the world's reserve currency is what we are risking.

Government expenditures are running at 185 percent of revenue, which is like the lone family breadwinner earning $50,000 a year, while the family spends $92,500 a year. With families that do that, it is not too long before the credit cards are cut off, the mortgage is called in and the family Chevy is repossessed.

According to those same White House figures, this year's deficit will be closer to $1.6 trillion than the $1.8 trillion previously projected. Now, there are only three basic ways to finance that deficit.

The first is by borrowing the savings of one's own citizens, thus consuming the seed corn of the private economy. The second is by borrowing from abroad. The third is by having the Fed, "through a roundabout process," writes Buffett, "printing money." Continued...