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Ross Perot? Anyone with his eyes open and willing to look at the numbers has been warning about this long before Ross Perot. Addressing the debt and deficit death spiral used to be Republican orthodoxy. But now even that consensus has collapsed on the right.

Before anyone jumps in to say that the GOP was always a fraud on these issues, remember that the Gingrich-Armey-Contract With America pols balanced the budget and were starting to move on entitlement reform before Clinton got Lewinskied into his hard left turn.

GWB ran for election and reelection with entitlement reform clearly in the platform: shift to a market oriented system and consumer choice for health insurance including Medicare; move Social Security onto a fully funded basis, with individually owned, inheritable accounts. He also pushed for much expanded school choice pointing towards a dismantling of the government stranglehold on elementary and secondary education. There were never enough votes to break the automatic democrat filibusters, but the path forward was clear.

Trump went over the side on those issues. He is back to the amazing, miraculous, perpetual growth hokum that is the pseudo-conservative equivalent to democrat tax the rich fantasies.

What has to be done is clear, but the question has always been whether we could act before a systemic collapse forced our hands. The democrats have been committed to reckless spending without limit because they think hard left socialism or outright communism will be the endgame. They are getting awfully close to forcing that decision. That’s why they are hellbent on turning the U.S. into a one-party state.

The CBO is warning of what will happen on our current course. ANY response begins with reforming entitlements, which only gets more painful with each passing day. That is essential whether we get the right kind of tax reform or not.