Dear Government: Knock It Off!

Dave Ramsey, the financial health guru says you can't get yourself out of a hole by digging deeper. If you're in financial trouble, you can't borrow more money to rescue yourself. Hopefully, during these trying economic times, we are learning this. Sadly, I've seen many examples of 'Turbo- diggers.'
The biggest offender however is the government. Our national debt- brace yourself- equates to every man, woman and child owing $45,000 in debt. And it keeps rising! So while you and I dig less (or stop digging), Uncle Sam has a huge excavator, digging a hole to China! Note the analogy- China has bought tremendous quantities of US debt.
Remember the scripture verse? "The borrower is servant to the lender." That's a scary thought!
Back to debt. We got in this mess by borrowing money we couldn't afford to buy overinflated things (houses). Experts say housing got us into this mess, and we're not going to get out of it until housing resets. In other words, the hundreds of thousands of distressed houses must be disposed of, through sales. In Las Vegas where I live, the foreclosure capital of the world, we could have as many as four years to wade through this mess.
We have to take our medicine. We don't need the government spending money they (we) don't have to stay the pain.
Have you ever seen so many construction barrels? In Las Vegas, they are building bridges to nowhere. Not exactly, but close. To me that's like losing your job so you go home and remodel the house. Life throws you a left hook and you lean into it.
Can't we back down the spending to 1996 levels? Did anyone complain in 1996 that we needed huge government spending? Yet our economy has retracted back to those levels. Shouldn't the government be too? The way they spend I feel like I'm careening around town in a cab with a drunk.