How bad is our fiscal crisis?

Unimaginably bad.  We are going to look back fondly at the debates in Wisconsin.

The bottom line, then, is that we need to look at the infinite-horizon fiscal gap not just for Social Security, but for the entire federal government. That analysis, based on the Congressional Budget Office’s long-term alternative fiscal scenario, shows an unfathomable fiscal gap of $202 trillion. And covering this gap requires coming up with the aforementioned 12 percent of GDP, forever.