A nemesis no more, deficit rising | csmonitor.com

"Once you have a legitimate reason to [unbalance the budget] it becomes very easy to lose fiscal discipline altogether," says Robert Bixby, head of the Concord Coalition, a group that promotes a balanced budget.

It would take a few years of red ink significantly greater than the US is now experiencing to get the attention of politicians and the public, according to Stan Collender, a budget expert at Fleishman-Hillard Inc. in Washington.

Given the tendency of the US political system to react slowly to most problems "It could easily be 2007 or 2008 at the earliest before anything happens," writes Collender in a recent column.

Note that this is only an opinion, however, I think that deficits are not a big issue as long as most voters see no immediate threat to themselves. There has to be further education that deficits are why things that benefit them, i.e. health care, Social Security, may not be provided