There are many components to this. Being able to develop and produce our own gas and oil is critically important to our future and plays into the financial issue but, you are correct, we desparately need to get our financial house in order.
One component of that is manufacturing. Here's a stat that should give you pause for concern - at the end of WWII, we had 60% of the world's manufacturing capacity. Today, we have less than 20% and an unemployment rate in excess of 9% (which probably means that the REAL number is closer to 20%!). THAT'S what our corrupt government (not just Bammy, but corrupt politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle) have given us. If we don't reverse the flow of manufacturing jobs offshore AND stop exporting domestically produced gas and oil (to lower the price at the pump), we are, indeed, hosed!
That first statistic doesn't concern me at all. This is mainly because it is predicated on the notion that having 60% of the world's manufacturing capacity somehow represents a normal, healthy state of affairs. In fact, the opposite is true and the 60% figure you cite is nothing more than a historical anomaly tied to the fact that the U.S. was the only industrial power to emerge from World War II with our infrastructure and industrial assets unscathed.
The 300 million people in this country represent less than 5% of the world's population. Even having 20% of the world's manufacturing capacity means we are very much "over-weighted" in that figure. We have a lot of things going for us here, but it's no accident that we are losing ground to other countries that are simply larger than us, growing faster than us, and working harder than us. You might even call it a natural turn of events, when you think about it.