It should be big news, but in a world turned upside down it is not.  On Friday, the Washington Times reported that "the federal government borrowed 46 cents of every dollar it has spent so far in fiscal year 2013, which began Oct. 1."

According to data from the Congressional Budget Office, during the first two months of the fiscal year the federal government spent $638 billion.  That's a whopping 14% increase over the first two months of last fiscal year, which itself was one of budgetary bloat.  The U.S. government is now spending an average of $10.45 billion per day or a staggering and stomach-turning $435.8 million per hour.

Focusing on the borrowed portion alone, at that current burn rate the national debt is growing by $4.8 billion every day.  Put another way, the federal government is spending $200 million per hour "that is doesn't have - 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including Thanksgiving, Christmas and Ramadan." 

As a point of reference, federal outlays in the most recent two months alone exceeded the combined annual profits of the top 100 largest companies in the Fortune 500. 

According to the Times, the "higher spending on mandatory items such as Social Security, Medicare and interest on the debt led the way in boosting spending compared with the previous year."  As Mark Steyn has pointed out, at the rate this government is amassing debt within a decade we will be paying more for interest payments (not debt service, rather interest only) than we spend on our military.

Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are you listening? 

For all the hubbub about an impending "fiscal cliff," at the current federal spending and borrowing levels we have already gone over the cliff and are free-falling.  The only questions are when and how hard we will land.  Some will say it doesn't feel that way.  Maybe so, but as the old saying goes it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop.  We are in what Peter Schiff and others have correctly described as a "government bubble."  And bubbles pop. 

No household, business, or other entity can sustain such profligacy for long.  While governments can paper over and defer the inevitable a little longer, they too are not immune to the laws of economics.  Those who claim otherwise are either dependent on the continuation of such excess for their own gain or, for whatever reason, want to see this country, as founded, collapse.

Liberals who claim we have a revenue problem are wrong.  Federal revenues currently are near record levels and revenues so far this fiscal year are "up by $30 billion compared with last year, or about 10 percent."  But wait, liberals will counter, there are more people than ever before too, so talk of high federal revenues is misleading.  Not so.  Since 1992 the U.S. population has increased by 23%.  During the same 20-year period, federal receipts (as adjusted for Uncle Sam's debasement of our currency via the printing of money, aka inflation) have increased by more than twice that amount or 48%. 

It is on the spending side of the ledger where the problem lies.  Federal outlays have surged by 71% since 1992 (adjusted for inflation) or three times the rate of population growth.  And besides, even in 1992 - and more so today - the federal government's annual budget included much that was arguably, if not outright, extra-constitutional.

The current budget-related debates and proposals emanating from Washington, D.C. lack seriousness, even sanity, and the parties involved know it.  They are betting most people won't catch on or, for that matter, care.  The fact of the matter is federal spending must be cut significantly and soon if our country is to survive.  This means real/actual across-the-board cuts and eliminations, not merely decreases in the rate of spending growth. 

As for so-called "revenue enhancements," not a single additional dollar in taxes should be extracted from current taxpayers unless it is derived from real economic growth: from higher profits, more people working (not for government), and an increase in economic activity.  Within the prevailing wealth-looting racket, if anyone believes that an additional dollar sent to Uncle Sam will reduce the deficit or pay down the debt rather than result in even higher spending and more debt heaped on the backs of current and future generations of Americans, I have some Solyndra stock to sell them.