Mr. Walker has run the numbers on the federal debt an deficit and, we’re not going to lie to you, it ain’t pretty. The country’s broke and getting broker. The good news is that even huge problems have solutions, and for this problem to get solved, you are going to have to a. Understand why this matters to you; and b. Do something about it.

Not to worry, we did the leg work for you by talking to the sensai of federal savings while scribling for Politics Daily. We’ve writen it up below. Read it, know it, and get ready to do something about it, ladies…

Q. Let’s say America was a person, how much credit card debt would America have?

A. Let’s put it this way: Spending last year was about $3.5 trillion. The deficit was $1.42 trillion, which means that revenues were about $2.1 trillion. So $2.1 trillion is equal to their annual income.

The total national debt right now is $12.3 trillion. So we owe five to six times more than we make every year. But that’s not the big deal.

In addition to that, there is another $45 trillion to $50 trillion in unfunded obligations that are off the balance sheet, which I think you ought to count. Medicare is the biggest part of it by far, and Social Security is a large part, too. So in reality, we owe between 25 and 30 times what we make every year.

Q. Is that like a balloon payment for a person, looming out there and we know we’re going to owe it?

A. It’s kind of like the mortgage-related sub-prime crisis, where there were a lot of off-balance-sheet obligations and contingencies that manifested themselves. I draw a lot of analogies between the mortgage-related subprime and the government’s finances, in that we want to avoid a super-sub-prime crisis.

Q. For somebody going through their day, gassing up the car, dropping off the kids and going to work, why does the debt matter? How does it affect their lives?

A. We’re mortgaging the future of the country, and their children and grandchildren. At the same time, because of the growth of spending, we’re reducing the role of investments in our future because the budget on the discretionary side is getting squeezed at a time when America is facing growing competition in a global economy.

Also, there are two kinds of taxes: current taxes and deferred taxes. To the extent that we’re not paying our way now, somebody is going to end up having to pay down the road.

Q. When you say our children and grandchildren will pay for it, does that mean they will literally have higher taxes?

A. Much higher. If we don’t end up reforming our ways, federal taxes will have to double within the next 20 to 30 years, just to stop the bleeding.

Q. That money would go toward paying for our future obligations?

A. And toward paying interest on the federal debt. In fact within 12 years, without an increase in interest rates, interest on the national debt is expected to be the largest item in the budget. And you get nothing for it.

Q. Who do we owe the money to?

A. Fifty percent is owed to foreign lenders. China is number one, Japan is number two, a block of oil producing nations comes next.

Q. Do you think that affects our foreign policy toward China?

A. Yes, it does. It’s already been manifested because one of the reasons American tax payers now guarantee $5 trillion in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt is because the Japanese and the Chinese demanded it.

Q. Is there a point at which China could say, ‘We’ve decided to stop lending you money?’

A. What’s more likely is that China will say, ‘We’re not going to lend you money unless you pay us higher interest rates.’”

Q. What should people expect their elected officials to do if they’re acting responsibly and taking care of the country?

A. In the short term the deficits are going to be high because of the recession, because of two wars, because of unemployment, but what we need to deal with is the structural imbalance. Once the economy recovers, once unemployment gets down, and the wars are over, we still have large and looming deficits. That’s what threatens the ship of state.

President Obama says he wants to freeze a part of discretionary spending for three years. That’s a good first step, but we’re going to have to do a lot more than that. He supports pay-as-you-go rules, but there are big loopholes in the pay-as-you-go-rules. Thirdly, he talks about creating a fiscal commission that would make recommendations on tougher budget controls, Social Security, Medicare and tax reforms. We clearly need to do that to engage the American people and to get a vote in Congress in 2011. That’s very, very important to maintain the confidence of our foreign lenders…if we lose the confidence of our foreign lenders, we’re in deep trouble.

Q. What does trouble look like?

A. That means the dollar will drop dramatically, interest rates will go up, unemployment would go up dramatically and you’ll have something much worse than a recession. It would be ugly. The important thing is we can avoid that and that’s what the book’s about.

Q. I know that you talk to lawmakers and testify in front of their committees, but do you have confidence that people in office get it and will do what’s necessary to deal with the situation, even if it’s unpopular?

A. Washington is a lagging indicator, but people around the country are starting to get it. The Massachusetts election was an expression of frustration that Washington is out of touch with reality and not working properly, especially in this area. If the people speak up, their leaders will follow.

The winner is chosen based on the number of guests, the number of female guests, whether the host of the show is a woman named “Candy,” the topics discussed and who discusses them.  It’s complicated, we know.

But this week, we’re giving the Chris Matthews Show first place and calling it a day because Chris Matthews showed the incredible judgement this Sunday to actually book CJP’s editor as a guest on the show!

The Chris Matthews Show always ranks at or near the top of our rankings, since it is the only show in town that always books two women and two men to talk about the events of the week.  But by booking CJP for our first Sunday Show appearance ever, Chris Matthews has not only won today’s Sunday Show Scorecard, the show has actually booked its way into the Sunday Show Scorecard Hall of Fame.  Congratulations, Chris Matthews Show!

And to the bookers at the other Sundays, don’t think we weren’t watching you this week– NO women, Fox News Sunday?  One woman out of seven, Meet the Press?  Ugh.

We know you can do better, Sunday shows, because you can’t do much worse.  We’ll see you back here next Sunday to talk about how you did.

President Obama

* Announced Tuesday he’ll draft regs to crack down on oil market speculation;
· Approved regulations increasing cars’ fuel efficiency to 54.5 MPG by 2025;
· Invested billions for automakers to make electric cars
· Increased some domestic oil production;
· Launched an “Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group” to look at whether speculation in the oil markets is driving up gas prices.

Mitt Romney

· Increase domestic oil production, drilling and exploration, including approving the XL-Keystone Pipeline;
· Open federal land for energy exploration;
· Reduce U.S. regulations on shale gas extraction;
· Concentrate alternative energy funding on basic research.

Newt Gingrich

· Promised to bring the price of gas down to $2.50 a gallon as president;
· Approve the XL-Keystone pipeline, which would bring oil from Canada to Texas;
· Use the U.S. military to keep Iranian shipping channels open for oil;
· Open up domestic and offshore, including in Alaska and off the U.S. coastline;
· Cut regulations for natural gas and gas shale, which the U.S. has in large supplies.

Ron Paul

· Expand domestic oil exploration and production;
· Increase tax incentives for oil refineries;
· Raise the reimbursement rate for if you use your vehicle for work to 70 cents per mile;
· Suspend federal gas taxes when prices go above $3.00/gallon
· Require federal officials to examine the monetary system and higher fuel costs.

But will any politicians’ plans change your price at the pump? To find out, we asked Alec Gutierrez, an analyst with Kelley Blue Book. 

“It’s a global increase in consumption and demand that’s been driving up prices here at home,” he said, adding that China, Brazil, India and Russia are competing with the U.S. for oil for the first time.

Another reason for the gas spike: The declining value of the dollar. “The dollar has been losing purchasing power around the globe for the last few years,” Gutierrez said.

Tensions with Iran and Syria can be also blamed for the latest spike in prices. “Investors are anticipating possibly supply disruptions in the Middle East,” he said.

Analysts, he said, expect gas to remain above $3.50/gallon neighborhood for the next several years, no matter who the president is.

“In the long term, politicians and presidents don’t have much of a say.”

Great.

The good news is that you are not without all hope when it comes to winning back the independent women who have quit you in droves latey, and are now leaning toward supporting President Obama for the November election. But the bad news is that it’s going to take a lot more than calling for women to join Augusta National, as you did Thursday, to get back in more ladies’ good graces. Here’s a reality check from some women who know what they’re talking about: 

Until three months ago, Romney led Obama among independent women by 5 percentage points in a head-to-head contest, according to the USA Today/Gallup swing-state poll. But 90 days and a Republican sprint to the right later, the same poll shows Romney losing to Obama by 18 points among all women, and by 14 points among independent women, making for a massive 19-point swing that will be difficult—but not impossible—for Romney to reverse before November.

“Independent women are very swing, so they are anything but locked up,” Celinda Lake, superstar lady pollster told us. “I think they are paying attention earlier than they normally do because these things are so outrageous in their minds. It isn’t just the positions the Republicans are taking—it’s the priorities. These women thought, ‘Things are really tough for my family, this country is in as deep a trouble as I’ve seen in my lifetime, and you’re worried about my birth control?’ That’s the really big factor here.” 

Lake predicted that independent women will remain persuadable by both campaigns right up to the end of the campaign cycle, but said that Romney will have to hit the reset button very soon to reverse the trend.  

Conservative women say they’ll be there for Romney—or whatever Republican wins the nomination—to defeat President Obama. But they will be voting because of social issues, not in spite of them. 

“There is not a war on women,” said Mallory Quigley, communications director for the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that opposes abortion rights and has endorsed Santorum. 

“Women that we see across the country are pro-life. They want conscience protections for health-care workers and religious institutions. There is a war on them. The voices of the pro-life women are being pushed to the side by the abortion lobby and by the president, who are saying, ‘You’re not the kind of woman we’re concerned about.’”

Lake predicted that the race for independent women’s votes will come down to the economy in the end and suggested that Democrats talk about kitchen-table issues, like food prices, cuts to summer-jobs programs and after-school programs, help for small businesses, and health care, all topics that women focus on and worry about on a daily basis. 

“The Romney campaign has to convince these women to take a second look. And when they take that second look, they have to see something different from what they’ve been seeing in their right-wing legislators in Congress or Rush Limbaugh,” she said. 

“This is a tightrope that he’s walking, and it’s not going to be easy.  And he’s not going to be able to do it just by saying women should be able to golf at Augusta.”

As you may or may not know, the Violence Against Women Act is due for renewal this year, but is stuck in Congress because of another partisan stand-off over what is usually a non-partisan issue. Enter Rep. Gwen Moore, a feisty, hard-charging, unapologetically liberal Democrat from Wisconsin. But as she told me during an interview in Washington, she is also a survivor of a lifetime of violence, including beatings, rapes, and abusive relationships.

“I have been a victim of domestic violence and sexual assault for as long as I can remember,” she said. “I think that men, boys, see it as a right of passage to have sex with girls. Lovers feel it is their right to dominate women in that way. That has been my experience.”

That experience led Moore to the House floor Wednesday to convince Republican members of Congress that the Violence Against Women Act is more than just another bill to be passed, blocked, or stalled on the House floor.

“It is pathetic and it is disappointing that it’s come to this,” she said on the House floor, nearly yelling at her colleagues across the aisle. “Violence against women in this country is not levied against just Democrats, but Republicans as well…not just rich people or poor people. It knows no gender, it knows no ethnicity, it knows nothing.”

Moore was leading the charge with Nancy Pelosi to force a vote on VAWA as a part of the budget being considered in the House. Republicans unanimously voted down the measure, even though every Republican woman in the Senate is co-sponsoring it across the Capitol. Read more at the Daily Beast…

Courtesy of 'Washington Could Learn A Lot'

We hear candidates on the campaign trail talking every day about reducing the size of the national debt.  Seems like a good idea, but before we talk about reducing the debt, don’t we need to know how big it is and who we owe all that money to?

We on the CJP editorial board say yes, so we’ve gone to the experts at Public Notice, the brains behind Bankrupting America and Washington Could Learn A Lot, to get the scoop.

The result?  The chance for the Janes to understand the basics of the debt in 10 seconds flat with the infographic above.

There, we learn:

* We owe about half of the debt to ourselves, the U.S. taxpayers, or actually whomever will be paying taxes the next 20 years, so your kids (or future kids).

* We owe most of the rest to:  CHINA (23%), JAPAN, (22%), and the U.K.  (9%).

* The most immediate problem for taxpayers is that we have to pay cash $$ to cover our interest payments, which will sound familiar to anyone with a credit card.   So we’ll have less money for Medicare, Social Security, the Pentagon, etc.

*As David Walker once told CJP, “If we don’t end up reforming our ways, federal taxes will have to double within the next 20 to 30 years, just to stop the bleeding.”

*  So how big is the debt?  When we interviewed Mr. Walker two years ago, it was $12.3 trillion.   It just hit $15 trillion.   We currently borrow about $4 billion every day.

Depressed yet?  Don’t be.  All of the candidates and President Obama say they have a plan to bring down the debt, and we’ll tell you all about them Monday.

It was wrapped in this thing called”a newspaper” that looks like tissue with words on it.  It said that the original law banning contraception passed in 1879.  That was the same year Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb and California was admitted to the United States.

It also said the use of contraception was made legal nearly 50 years ago, in 1965, when the Supreme Court’s Connecticut v. Griswold decision, when the Court established the right to privacy and said a married couple cannot be prevented from using contraception if they feel like it.   Also in 1965, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 969, gas cost 31 cents a gallon, and “Mary Poppins” debuted in movie theaters.

The point being, we’re all up for a debate over who pays for contraception or whether Catholic institutions should have to cover co-pays for it.  But asking whether women should be able to use contraception, or whether advocating for access to contraception makes you a prostitute?  That’s not even vintage.  It’s Dark Ages.

Women are now the majority of the work force, the majority of students, the majority of heads of households and the majority of voters.  When they’re also the majority of voices debating their own access to contraception, we’ll sit back and relax.  Until then, we’ll keep writing columns like this over at The Washington Post’s “She the People” blog.

By the end of the night, Mitt Romney had won seven states, including squeaking by in all-important Ohio, and placed a surprising second in Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia.

Rick Santorum won Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota and placed a surprisingly strong second in Ohio.

Newt Gingrich won his home state of Georgia by a mile and lost everything else by two miles. Regardless, and importantly, he was still ahead of Rick Santorum in the delegate count.

CJP went to Newt’s victory party in Atlanta and saw the happy honey bear basking in the glory of going one-for-11.

That meant a speech that went on and on and a vow that his scrappy campaign would do the same. He called the other guys “bunnies” and said he’s the tortoise putting one foot in front of the other. And the idea that he might drop out, as Rick Santorum wants him to do? “There is zero reason for us to leave the race,” Newt’s guy told us.

Translation: This thing ain’t over ladies! Yay for freelancers everywhere. And yay for America, which loves nothing more than a political spectacle. And yay for Janes, who get to keep votng and keep picking the next Republican vying to be the next leader of the free world.

We are fully confident that all of the Janes in Super Tuesday states have either already voted or have a plan of attack to do so before the polls close.  But voting is just half the fun today– the other half is watching the returns for clues to who will eventually be the GOP nominee and how strong said nominee will be against President Obama in November.   If the suspense is killing you, CJP gave a Super Tuesday preview to CNN, which you can watch above.  Those without ADD, and we do not include ourselves in that group, can read on below for the five things every smart girl will know tomorrow…

1.  What happens in Ohio.  Florida is so 2000.  The new hot spot for swing state  soothsayers is Ohio, that lovable concoction of foul weather and tough times in the middle of the Rust Belt.  Hidden inside the Buckeye state are every kind of conservative voter under the rainbow– social, fiscal, Tea Party, blue collar, Shaker Heights suburbanite, and conservatives who consider themselves some or all of the above.  Any Republican who can sweep these groups and increase turnout over 2008 is going to be sitting pretty come the fall.  Mittens needs to win this one, but Santorum needs it more.

2.  Women’s votes.   All the Janes know we run the show in November with 55% of the vote, but how will the GOP do tonight with the ladies?  A strong showing among women for one candidate makes him the best candidate to go against Obama, since the president won the women’s vote by seven points in 2008.  A poor showing among all of the candidates (with lower turnout among women from 2008) means that Rush-slut-contraception-male-only-congressional-panel-back-to-the-future-trans-what-year-is-it-anyway-gate has taken its toll on the GOP brand among women.

3.  Newt Gingrich’s margin in Georgia.  It’s been nearly a month since Gingrich had his one and only victory in South Carolina, but it looks like he will win at least one more tonight in Georgia.  Check to see if Newt wins by more than 3 points in his home state, which was Romney’s margin in Michigan.  If he can out pace Romney in the Backyard Primary, Gingrich will stay in the race.  If he loses Georgia, even the former Speaker admitted that may be it for him.

4.  Santorum’s Mom.  After Rick Santorum lost women by a huge margin in Michigan last week, he shook up his stump speech and thanked the women he called the role models in his life- his mom, his wife, and his eldest daughter.  It was a clear change in tone after weeks of batting down press stories about his views on contraception, women in the workplace, and all those snobs who go to college.  A speech with mom at the top means he’s staying on course and still reaching out to women.

5.  Romney’s Speech.  Does Mittens declare victory and take it to Obama or play it cool and focus on Alabama and Mississippi, the next states to vote?  A focus on November means he may be ready to publicly admit what we know he’s been thinking all along– I’ve got this thing in the bag.

On a night like Super Tuesday, it just seems wrong not to have some super plans, don’t you agree?  Then join CJP, MSNBC’s fabulous Alex Wagner  and iVillage’s lovely Kelly Wallace and Joanne Bamberger Tuesday night for a Super Tuesday ichat with iVillage.

We’ll be there to talk turkey, answer questions, and revel in the sheer absurdity that only comes around every four years in the throes of a presidential race.

The chat starts at 9 EST, ends maybe around 10 (?), and gets exponentially more fun with every Jane that joins in.   Save THIS LINK now and come on over later.