CLAYTON CRAMER: Why This Country Is Doomed. “What is really tragic is how easy it would be to fix this. Here is a spreadsheet from the White House Office of Management and Budget that shows budgets in inflation adjusted dollars from 1940 through estimated 2018. If the federal government would spend what it did in 2006 (you know, while we were fighting a costly war in Iraq), $2.655 trillion a year, combined with the 2013 estimate for receipts (2.712 trillion a year), we would have a balanced budget — actually, a slight surplus. Sure, we have more people out of work today than in 2006, and the government spends more on unemployment and various support programs — but we are not fighting a war in Iraq, either.”