USA Today analysis of government economic reports paints an even more bleak picture than anyone has previously understood.

[USA Today] The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.

This gap between spending commitments and revenue last year equals more than one-third of the nation’s gross domestic product.

Medicare alone took on $1.8 trillion in new liabilities, more than the record deficit prompting heated debate between Congress and the White House over lifting the debt ceiling.

Social Security added $1.4 trillion in obligations, partly reflecting longer life expectancies. Federal and military retirement programs added more to the financial hole, too.

Corporations would be required to count these new liabilities when they are taken on — and report a big loss to shareholders. Unlike businesses, however, Congress postpones recording spending commitments until it writes a check.

The $61.6 trillion in unfunded obligations amounts to $534,000 per household. That’s more than five times what Americans have borrowed for everything else — mortgages, car loans and other debt. It reflects the challenge as the number of retirees soars over the next 20 years and seniors try to collect on those spending promises.

That’s a serious hole to get out of there — how many families out there not named “Soros” have half-a-mil to spare for their share of the national debt? It also underscores the impact of the viral Internet “penny” video from a couple months back, where a fellow showed a dining table of pennies lined side by side, picked just one up, cut it in half, and explained that that miniscule and pointless amount was what politicos in Washington D.C. were arguing about when the problem is that about two-thirds of his table of pennies — the debt — was from Social Security and Medicare alone.

Within this USA Today article is a quote from some left-leaning “think tank” advocate retorting that this is all just scare tactics, that we need simply “grow” our way out of the problem. Well, it’s nice to finally find a liberal acknowledge that growing the economy can reduce your taxation needs — if only they admitted that the same is true of income or corporate taxes, not just with entitlements. However, growing your economy to deal with a couple hundred billion or even a trillion is one thing, but $61 trillion? That takes more than just trying to grow the economy, that takes an economic reformation.

But that’s simply not a task that the Obama Democrats will every understand. Martin Feldman highlights two of the biggest problems:

Although Mr. Obama grudgingly agreed to continue the Bush tax cuts for 2011 and 2012, his budget this year repeated his call for higher tax rates on upper-income individuals and multinational corporations. With that higher-tax cloud hanging over them, it is not surprising that individuals and businesses do not make the entrepreneurial investments and business expansions that would cause a solid recovery.

A third problem stems from the administration’s lack of an explicit plan to deal with future budget deficits and with the exploding national debt. This creates uncertainty about future tax increases and interest rates that impedes spending by households and investment by businesses. The national debt has jumped to 69% of GDP this year, from 40% in 2008. It is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to reach more than 85% by the end of the decade, and to keep rising after that. The reality is even worse since ObamaCare alone will cost more than $1 trillion in its first 10 years.

Obama made it worse. That’s the theme Republicans must pound upon.

Having said that, I’m not even confident that beyond Paul Ryan any Republicans have the backbone to push for an economic reformation — the vast majority of them are “Democrat Lite” brand of politics, who believe that they have to spend similar to Democrats to stay in power, but not spend so much they’re running to the left of Democrats.

Just one problem: Paul Ryan isn’t running for president.

Now some good news. Former Minnesota Gov. Pawlenty, while not as economically strong as Ryan, is running and appears to have a tangible and communicative plan.

Pawlenty is calling for policies to grow the economy by 5% every year for the next ten years. This is beyond aggressive, with the WSJ commenting that although “the economy grew 4.9% on average between 1983 and 1987, and nearly 4.7% between 1996 and 1999… such long booms are rare in developed economies and we can’t recall one that lasted 10 years.”

But to Pawlenty’s credit, and unlike the vast majority of politicos, he at least provides details for how he’d achieve this.

He sketched out yesterday a Reagan-like tax reform of lower rates for individuals and businesses. The first $50,000 in individual income ($100,000 for couples) would be taxed at 10% and after that a top marginal rate of 25%. This would give a big lift to the small and medium-sized businesses that file under the individual tax code and create most new jobs. He’d also zero out taxes on capital gains, dividends and estates.

Mr. Pawlenty says that families earning under $50,000 would pay an effective income tax rate of 0%, because he would maintain tax benefits like those for mortgage interest or the child credit that use the tax code as social policy. Mr. Pawlenty is right not to buy into the liberal objection that tax reform must be revenue neutral according to scoring rules that assume no growth dividend, but minimizing tax credit carve-outs would raise revenue by making the tax code more efficient.

The Minnesotan is on firmer ground with his corporate tax overhaul, which would reduce the rate to 15% from the current 35% in return for cleaning out the warren of loopholes and special favors. Businesses will expand, enlarge their payrolls and repatriate overseas earnings. The added benefit is that most corporate welfare is dispensed through the tax code—so a flatter, simpler system will reduce political mediation of the economy and the resulting misallocation of capital. It is both a pro-growth tax policy and government reform.

Mr. Pawlenty would also limit Washington’s damage by paring the regulatory overreach that has defined the last three years and by curbing spending over time to 18% of GDP (from 24% today), which is the historical revenue average and is also crucial for economic revival.

My hope is that Pawlenty will force all the other Republican candidates to tack hard to the right on their economic policies. Pawlenty might not be Paul Ryan, but he could be good enough to beat the Obama Democrats. It’s a challenge, yes. But not too long ago the conventional wisdom was that no president could ever survive a re-election gambit facing near double-digit unemployment. So while Pawlenty has a big hill to climb, Obama’s could be worse come summer 2012.

N.Y. Rep. Anthony Weiner claimed he was a “victim,” first of hacked social media, then of just a “prank.” It was obvious to anyone with a hint of rational and objective reasoning skills, which is to say everyone who doesn’t work as a Democrat on Capital Hill or as a journalist, that Weiner was lying. Worse, he wasn’t even good at lying. My brother summed it up the best, analogizing that Weiner, “lies like a child” — each outlandish lie followed by one even more ridiculous.

The most comical outcome from Weiner-gate is the indictment against his liberal defenders and particularly against the mainstream media.

Regarding the former, we once again see that there most certainly exists a double standard between sexual scandals affecting Democrats versus Republicans. Weiner has adamantly refused to resign over his behavior, and to date he yields no calls from his party to do so. Contrast this to the scandals of Republicans like FL Rep. Mark Foley, ID Sen. Larry Craig, or N.Y. Rep. Chris Lee — all were immediately called upon to resign by Republicans on the Hill. There was no reason for a dog-and-pony show in the form of an Ethics committee hearing such as the one Nancy Pelosi is requesting — these guys were gone, and gone fast.

Peter Tucci sums it up simply:

Two things are clear: 1) What Weiner did is far worse than what [Chris] Lee did; and 2) If Weiner were a Republican, he would have already tendered his resignation.

Next, the indictment against the media.

The mainstream media were just about to let Weiner off the hook, and I believe would have were it not for Andrew Breitbart doing their job for them. As with the ACORN and Planned Parenthood scandals before this, Breitbart has exposed the mainstream media as being too slanted and incompetent to fairly cover any shortcomings in the Democrat Party or liberal organizations. Now, having been caught with their pants down, all pun intended, the mainstream media has suddenly rediscovered outrage — Yes, we’re outraged that Weiner would lie to our faces, say the media. It is to laugh. Like Weiner, the only thing the media regrets is having been exposed as inept.

Well, I suppose like a broken clock being right twice a day they’re not all schmucks in the media. ABC News Jonathon Karl at least attempted to throw some hardballs Weiner’s way, and he is deserved in extracting his pound of flesh now, given how Weiner attempt to turn the tables and shame Karl during that interview.