Economic doomsayer sees red

Are we the Roman Empire?

Are we arrogant, gluttonous, maxed out? Are we led by spineless incompetents? Are we in denial and due for a fall?There was a man in town Tuesday giving America that blistering critique.

What perked up my ears wasn't the idea that we're a nation on the road to ruin. We've heard that before. Often it comes with a moral or religious scolding. And it's always, so far, been wrong.

But this guy makes his case with something far more persuasive. Math.

For a decade David Walker was America's comptroller, the national bean counter. He gazed into the abyss of the government's accounting ledgers.

Then the abyss gazed back. Last month, Walker quit. He left because of the crisis he saw in those off-kilter books. But also to get out of the capital. To hit the road.

"I came to see that the answers aren't going to come from Washington," Walker says. "The numbers don't lie — we have an epic fiscal deficit. But it's nothing compared to our leadership deficit.

"What needs to be done will have to be forced on them."

By you, he adds.

So Walker now travels the country in a sort of doomsaying minstrel show. He started two years ago — on the "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour" — and has a geek cult following as the gimlet-eyed number cruncher, PowerPointing truth to power.

He jousted on Comedy Central with Stephen Colbert (who suggested we end-run this depressing "money thing" by going back to the barter system). And he's the bespectacled star of a film about America's descent into debt, called, fittingly, "I.O.U.S.A."

Walker laid the "America is Rome" case out for me in the lobby of a SeaTac hotel.

We're overextended by war. We spend recklessly. We're "addicted to debt" — even exhorted by our own government to splurge borrowed money on baubles (Remember to use that stimulus check for a flat-screen TV!).

Most Roman-like, he said, are our politicians. Polarized into factions, they do little but fight to consolidate power.

Meanwhile, Congress has rung up blank-check promises for health-care, retirement and other benefits that are short of expected revenues to the tune of $50 trillion — a generation-crippling $450,000 for every American household.

"That's the real mortgage crisis — the one nobody's talking about," Walker says. "You have a $450,000 loan obligation, with no collateral and no plan for paying it back. The subprime crisis is peanuts."

Why aren't the presidential candidates talking about this? Probably because they want to get elected. So they squabble over who's more at home in a duck blind. Or pander to us with gas-tax holidays.

Walker has his fixes. Big spending cuts. Health-care rationing. Higher taxes. Even convening a constitutional convention, to force the issues.

In the end it isn't about numbers, says the accountant. Romans were famed for stubbornness. That empire stuck to its path. But ours is supposedly known for its ability to adapt.

To change. There's been a lot of talk about change this election. Only not yet much about the kind we really need.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.