It doesn't matter how carefully you pay your monthly credit card bill, or clip grocery coupons or even drive the car an extra couple of years. You are still obligated up to your eyeballs -- an estimated future exposure of $156,000 per person.

If something is not done soon, budget experts say, the country will be faced with unpalatable choices of sharply raising taxes, substantially cutting back popular government programs such as Medicare and Social Security, or watching as the standard of living for the next generation of Americans declines. And it's possible that all three may occur.

"We are in much worse financial condition than advertised," said David Walker, U.S. comptroller general and head of the Government Accountability Office. "The future is scary."

However scary to the economists, the federal debt is a problem that most politicians prefer to ignore. The national debate has been dominated by Iraq, national security, abortion, gay rights and other high profile issues -- not red ink.

Which is why Walker has been leading a not-so-merry-band of economists -- both liberals and conservatives -- around the country attempting to educate the public on the coming fiscal train wreck. The economists hope that if people understand the problem, they will demand that their political leaders do something before things get worse.

"People in Washington are polarized along partisan and ideological lines," said Walker, who recently held a town hall forum at Duke University, his fifth stop on what the economists call the "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour." "People have little idea of where we are, where we are headed and what the consequences of doing nothing are."

Just nine years ago, Congress passed a balanced budget for the first time in a generation, and there was rosy talk about what should be done with future surpluses. The balanced budget was negotiated in 1997 by a Republican-controlled Congress and the Democratic Clinton administration. The key deal maker was Erskine Bowles, then Clinton's White House chief of staff and now president of the University of North Carolina system.

But the nation's fiscal health has rapidly deteriorated since then -- and now hardly anybody in public life wants to talk about it, including Bowles.

The surplus of the Clinton years quickly disappeared with the collapse of the tech boom and the onset of a recession. Then came Sept. 11, 2001, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the tax cuts pushed through Congress by President Bush.

But the biggest driving force in the spiraling federal deficit is the growing entitlement programs -- particularly those programs fueled by rising medical costs such as Medicare and Medicaid. The impending retirement of the huge baby boom generation will cause costs to explode.

What worries Walker and his fellow experts is how we will pay the retirement costs and medical bills of the boomers, while covering the other costs of government, such as disaster relief and defense, while also keeping taxes at a reasonable level.

The federal deficit last year was $319 billion, but when the accrual method of accounting is used -- which most businesses use because it includes the costs of future promises such as pensions and veterans benefits -- the deficit was actually $760 billion last year on $2.7 trillion in revenues, according to Walker. That is a 30 percent negative bottom line, Walker said.

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"As we economists commonly say, 'holy moly,' " said Stuart Butler of the conservative Heritage Foundation. Actually, Butler said, that is a cleaned-up version of what they say.

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