When was the last time you heard the word “deficit” used so often? I’ll bet I heard it or read it more often last week than the last two years combined. That’s a good thing!

When President Obama first appointed the Deficit Commission, I was disappointed the Republican Party did not support that effort and felt it would therefore just be another waste of time, like the 1987 Social Security Commission chaired by Alan Greenspan.

Like an alcoholic cannot be helped until they admit they have a problem, America has actually started to talk seriously about the problem of our deficit and the tradeoffs of each solution. That’s a good thing!

I tend to think of our political system as too impotent to do more than talk, but maybe the beauty of our “system” is that we can deal with tough problems . . . but not until we are on the edge of the abyss. That’s a bad thing!