Overall, I believe this Presidential election season has been productive in terms of reviving the public dialogue of critical issues facing the nation. War on Iraq has been passionately debated among candidates, and the issue of the economy has been in the front page in the major news outlets.

Although the candidates spent a good amount of campaign time to talk about those issues with the American people, one subject has been held near silence: the national debt.

I mean the debt that the federal government owes to the world as our elected officials choose to cut taxes while maintaining ambitious federal projects that costs enormous amounts of money. The mainstream candidates have focused on their new tax policies and on how they will lower taxes when they become President. But who is going to pay for the national debt?

Are there any solutions? There are two that are obvious and yet unfeasible in the current political arena. It is either major tax increases or major cuts in government programs. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem to be choosing either option as it is political suicide to do so.

But truly our national debt cannot march on forever. If other countries are facing similar situations, then they will face a possible temporary shutdown of the national government, which will disrupt commerce and other critical national infrastructures and services.

We need to realize that we cannot afford the current government services if we do not plan on increasing government revenue. The fact that is disappointing is not that we do not have a feasible solution but that we as a society are not talking about the problem. We are more focused on how we can lower taxes for ourselves and still keep current government services, which cannot last longer.

This is a tough problem that demands attention. I will admit that I do not like the idea of being taxed more heavily than it is now, but at the same time I realize that we depend most of the costly services provided by the government. Please, let’s think about this, shall we?