As I write this, my share of the national debt is about $175,000. When John McCain or Barack Obama is sworn in as President, his government will owe ten trillion dollars. I managed to get through school without ever taking a course in economics, but even I can tell that this is a lot of money.

I.O.U.S.A. tries to give ordinary people like me a sense of what that means. The film is full of people who have taken economic courses: the former Comptroller General, two former chairs of the Federal Reserve Board, members of Congress, and many more. The main talking heads in the film are David Walker, former Comptroller General, and Bill Bixby of the Concord Coalition, a group advocating fiscally responsible government.

The issue is not simple. I.O.U.S.A. offers a sort of Econ 101 for those of us who don't really get economics. The nation has always had a deficit (except briefly in the 1830s). It goes up; it goes down. But the makers of the film see the trend of a rapidy growing deficit. It happens the same way for a nation as it happens for us. If we spend more money than we take in, we end up in debt. Most of us understand that when the debt gets too large, we have to cut back or find more income—a second job, rob a bank, whatever. Those are the choices for the government, too, if it is going to deal with this debt. Either cut back on what it spends (Medicare, Medicaid, war, the Bridge to Nowhere, homeland security) or they have to bring in more money (raise taxes).

The film breaks down the deficit into four areas: the budget deficit, a savings deficit, the trade deficit, and a leadership deficit. The chapter on the budget deficit deals mostly with the government's spending and taxing options. Sure the Bridge to Nowhere and other earmarks could be cut, but they only represent about one percent of the budget. If the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010, they will only cover ten percent of what we need to balance the budget.

Moving to the savings deficit it gets more personal with the way Americans have so little savings (sometimes dropping into a negative percentage of the Gross National Product). The entire idea that we can have things without paying for them has gotten to the point that it seems natural for us (hence all the credit card debt) so we don't see much reason why the government can't do the same thing. They could even print more money if they wanted. But that's not a good idea either—that gets into the realm dealt with by the Federal Reserve.

The trade deficit (importing more than we export) is astounding. In fact, the US has the largest deficit in the world. That is sending more and more of our money to other countries (mostly China at this point). Does that affect our security? It could. It also makes us poorer as a nation, although we pretend we don't notice.

When discussing the leadership deficit, the film makes it clear this is not a Republican or Democratic issue. What is needed, the film says, is someone to make difficult choices. The song playing over the closing credits is "Cruel to be Kind." That pretty much sums up what the filmmakers think the US needs.

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