Sum of All Fears = Deficit

If the "issue" of deficit is not self evident, not sure what self evident really means (decided to start a label in its "honor"). Slate has two columns - here and here:

"America: You have a serious problem!" Simpson said. "I do the numbers and Al does the color," Bowles said, taking over, stressing the need to have an "adult conversation" about what happens going forward.
But Simpson and Bowles, like all true obsessives, worry so much because they can do so little. They can start a conversation, of course. But Americans don't have to listen to them, and they appear not to be. Polls routinely show that Americans worry less about the deficit than they do about job creation and a plethora of other issues. Congress doesn't have to heed Simpson and Bowles, either. Even if the bipartisan commission agrees on and issues a deficit-reduction plan, neither chamber is required to bring it up for a vote, let alone implement it.
Moreover, and more importantly, most economists acknowledge that while the deficit and debt are real issues, the country's massive jobs crisis and broader economic malaise remain priority No.1. And those are problems that would be ameliorated by making the deficit bigger, not smaller, in the near term."

I don't know whether Bowles and Simpson have arrived at the right solution. But Washington's failure to arrive at any solution as the deficit problem gets worse and worse reminds me of Enron, the much-admired Houston-based energy giant that crashed and burned nine years ago, uncovering the gaudiest business scandal of the aughts. The United States isn't going to disappear like Enron, of course. But it's not inconceivable that global investors who hold our debt could lose their faith, and begin dumping Treasury bonds, or refuse to buy new ones, thereby sending our interest costs sharply higher and our economy into shock.
Start with the most basic problem: accounting. At the heart of Enron's artifice were accounting tricks that served to mask the true amount of debt the company had by keeping it off the company's financial statements. This had the effect of making Enron look far healthier than it was. At the time Enron went bankrupt, it had $38 billion in debt—only about $12 billion of which was reflected on its balance sheet.
The federal government is similarly able to keep its biggest debt liabilities off the books: Social Security and Medicare. The vast payouts these two programs will need to make in coming years aren't reflected on the government's balance sheet. The government argues that's proper because the terms of the payout can be changed. (Really? See paragraph one.) David Walker, who served as comptroller general from 1998 to 2008, puts the liability at $45 trillion to $50 trillion. "They don't combine them, they don't add them up to show how serious the problem is," he said on The Daily Show. John Williams of the Web site Shadow Stats said that if you added up the present value of all the government's liabilities, the annual deficit in 2008 was $5.1 trillion, versus the official number of $455 billion.

Simpson and Bowles draft proposal - Here