The stubborn resistance to this simple set of facts is instructive.

Entitlements in the 2008 budget--Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid--come to about $1.2 trillion. This is more than the entire discretionary budget, and 2.6 times the non-defense discretionary budget. The discretionary budget is pretty much everything--EVERYTHING the Federal government spends outside of entitlements and interest. In another four years, entitlements will be 3.5 times nondefense discretionary spending.

You could pay for about 4,000 "bridges to nowhere" with that kind of money. All the earmarks combined in 2006 were about $30 billion (they're lower now). That's three percent of the entitlement budget.

Any of this finally sinking in?

The Welfare State and massive social spending are the foundations of liberal thought. That this is what will inevitably sink the U.S. budget is something they can't seem to deal with, to the point where the information is apparently wiped out the second they hear it.

Start with this CBO report. Then go to this bit on America's credit rating.

There's a lot more where that came from.