I.O.U.S.A - Addison Wiggin [10]
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The Mission 11
Having gone back to the drawing board, we were shocked when I.O.U.S.A. was among 16 out of 935 fi lms to be selected for competition at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in 2008. At the festival it became clear that the audience was in tune with the fi lm ’ s message, as it sold out every screening and we received standing ovations. Variety, the fi lm industry magazine, likened the fi lm to An Inconvenient Truth for economics. Kenneth Turan, fi lm critic for the Los Angeles Times, called it the “ scariest fi lm at Sundance. ” Michael Sragow of the Baltimore Sun lauded our project as having come from a
“ new breed of documentary fi lmmakers. ”
We subsequently took the fi lm to Dallas; Philadelphia; Jacksonville, North Carolina; Oregon; and Silver Spring, Maryland. At each festival the fi lm was received with critical acclaim. We screened at the Maryland Film Festival, in our home town of Baltimore, with the help of festival director Jed Dietz, whose offi ce is a stone ’ s throw away from our own. Jed was instrumental in helping us navigate the early phase of the project. Again, we were encouraged by the audience ’ s response. By this time, we began to notice new faces in the crowd. Former senators and members of previous presidential cabinets arrived and took part in question and answer sessions. We hope they were paying attention.
David Walker, as he explains in the Foreword, was inspired by the fi lm ’ s reception. He was persuaded to resign his post at the Government Accountability Offi ce (GAO) to head up the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. His fi rst act at the Foundation was to acquire the fi lm from Agora Entertainment, the production company we founded to produce the fi lm, and subsequently to orchestrate the distribution of the fi lm.
Through the Peterson Foundation
’ s efforts, the fi lm
opened in 400 theatres around the country on August 21, 2008. The premier itself was held in Omaha, Nebraska, with a live simulcast satellite feed featuring Warren Buffett, Pete Peterson, and David Walker. During the two weeks following the event, the fi lm was screened at the Impact Film cintro.indd 11
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12 The
Mission
Festival, and was one of four selected for viewing at both the Democratic and Republican national party conventions.
The timing of the debut of the fi lm on the national scene and the release of this book couldn ’ t be more appropriate. Over the course of the project, the national debt alone has provided ample proof of what negative compounding can do to a balance sheet. At the time we were mailing Empire of Debt to Congress, and David Walker was sounding the alarm at the National Press Club, the national debt stood at $4.7 trillion. We didn ’ t want to believe the $8 trillion the Levy Institute projected by 2008.
Unfortunately, their projections fell signifi cantly short. On August 31, 2007, the debt hit $8 trillion. As I.O.U.S.A. debuted in theatres in August 2008, the debt spiraled over $9 trillion.
The promises on the books for all of the federal obligations, including Social Security and Medicare programs, already exceeds $53 trillion
— a number so monumental it makes
understanding the scope of the obligation next to impossible.
To meet its current obligations, the U.S. government racks up another $1.86 billion of debt every day. In very simple terms, every citizen already “ owes ” over $32,000. By 2010, that fi gure will be $38,000. By 2017, Social Security will no longer run surpluses and, thus, will no longer help fund the government’s other activities. From that point forward, the debt compounds negatively—and in dramatic fashion.
What ’ s at stake? The U.S. government is going broke. At this rate it won ’ t be able to do what you believe it can do. One study, conducted by the National