From TulsaToday.com:

A front page story in USA Today on Tuesday (June 7) placed U.S. debt at an astonishing $62 trillion, or $534,000 per household. Knowledgeable analysts contend that Oklahoma and other states cannot start soon enough to attack the gap between revenues and actual government liabilities.

Jonathan Small of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs said in an interview today that a review of widely available data yields the conclusion that Oklahoma’s unfunded debts – even after historic pension reforms – are approximately $20 billion.

As for this morning’s conversation starter, Dennis Cauchon wrote in the nation’s largest daily that the federal government’s “financial condition deteriorated rapidly last year, far beyond the $1.5 trillion in new debt taken on to finance the budget deficit.”

Cauchon’s conclusions put total debt much closer to the estimates of Sheila Weinberg of the Institute for Truth in Accounting.  Read more: