What about entitlements?

Barack Obama has embarked upon an ambitious agenda, pushing everything from the most massive spending bill in American history, to a "cap-and-trade" carbon tax on energy consumption, to his slow-motion plan to impose on Americans "single-payer" socialized medicine.

All this in less than seven months!

But what's likely to be done about the giant Roosevelt-Johnson schemes that threaten to bankrupt the nation before mid-century?

The trustees of the Social Security system, the world's biggest social spending program, said recently that in 2016 -- a year earlier than previously forecast -- money paid out in benefits will start exceeding the tax dollars flowing in. With no changes, Social Security will be completely depleted in 2037.

Medicare -- government health care that now covers 45 million elderly and disabled people -- is in even worse shape. It's been paying out more than it takes in since last year, and is projected to go insolvent in 2017.

President Obama has said he'll tackle Social Security and related entitlement programs once the health care overhaul is resolved. But how much "political capital" is left?

"Failure on health care could make it harder, if not impossible, for Mr. Obama to successfully tackle overhauling Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," The Associated Press noted this week.

The raucous health care debate is "a bad omen for any change in social policy," warns Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University who's also a former Senate aide.

"People seem to be very fearful of tampering with what already exists. It may be a simple reaction to the uncertainty that's been introduced into people's lives by the recession," Mr. Baker says.

Enacting any of the most likely answers -- massive tax hikes, Draconian benefit cuts or a planned default on the national debt -- would make today's legislative squabbles look like a kid's playground.

The national debt -- the grand total of accumulated annual deficits -- now stands at $11.8 trillion. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner asked Congress last week to raise the legal limit above the current $12.1 trillion, a limit Mr. Geithner said could be reached as early as mid-October.

The nation is actuarially bankrupt. Anyone who has ever sat down to work a family budget knows you need to close existing budget gaps by bringing spending into line with income first, before launching new spending plans.

Unless, of course, what you have in mind is something very different indeed. If you were cynical enough, and you wanted to force the Congress to enact massive tax hikes, designed to "rob from the rich and give to the poor," what kind of squeeze play would place them in a corner from which there's no other escape?