Guess who said the following: "It is incredible that a system of taxation which permits a man with an income of $1 million a year to pay not 1 cent to his government should remain unaltered."

We won't be able to say we weren't warned. Continued huge federal budget deficits will eventually mean huge increases in government borrowing costs, Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of Barack Obama's deficit reduction commission, predicted this month. "The markets will come. They will be swift, and they will be severe, and this country will never be the same."

Is there any chance we can come to grips with our short-term and long-term fiscal problems -- the huge current federal budget deficit and the huge looming increases in entitlement spending?