It's time for another Ross Perot to remind Americans about the dangers of deficit spending. Actually, most Americans don't need to be reminded, it's the people in Washington, D.C., who need to hear the warnings of reckless, unsustainable spending.

News last week that the federal budget deficit had surged to an all-time high of $1.42 trillion was met with more yawns than gasps. The deficit, as a percentage of the total economy, is now the highest it's been since 1945 when the United States was fighting World War II.

Despite the growing mountain of debt, too many people in Washington, D.C., and across the country, seem unconcerned.

Admittedly, President Barack Obama has faced tough issues including the financial crisis and efforts to stabilize an economy in a deep recession. But there is a growing sense that political objectives in the White House and in Congress outweigh any concerns over deficits. In Washington, spending money is easy — and politically popular. Spending makes people happy now, debt is a problem for the future.

Perot, despite his quirky personality, served a valuable function during his failed 1992 presidential bid as an independent candidate in making Americans aware of the dangers of deficit spending. With his speeches and charts, he helped people understand that deficit spending, piling on debt and running unsustainable programs, produces bills that eventually have to be paid, And those bills will be paid by the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of today's taxpayers.

Today, there seems to be no appreciation for the consequences of massive deficit spending, especially in Washington, D.C., where deficit spending pleases constituents, and quite often campaign contributors.

A growing number of Americans have become concerned with the torrent of money flowing out of Washington. The $770 billion financial rescue plan, known as TARP, was put together and passed by Congress in the near-panic atmosphere of a looming collapse of the global financial system in the fall of 2008. Soon after Obama was sworn in, the $787 billion stimulus plan was passed by Congress to help create jobs. But doubts about the effectiveness of that giant spending package have grown as unemployment continues to rise, hitting 9.8 percent in August.

The trillions of dollars spent bailing out Wall Street banks and Detroit automakers made many people uncomfortable. Also troubling was the "too big to fail" argument used as justification to hand over hundreds of billions of dollars to companies that took irresponsible risks or were poorly managed — or both.

With about half the $787 billion stimulus money having been spent, there are increasing calls for pulling back a large portion of the money scheduled to be spent in 2010 and 2011. But most in Congress are resisting those calls for fiscal restraint because the intended recipients of the outyear stimulus spending expect that money and will fight to keep it.

Republicans, who controlled Congress during much of the presidency of George W. Bush, share part of the blame for growing deficits. Congress showed little spending restraint under Bush and the president went along with it.

Questionable earmark spending hit record levels and the creation of the Medicare Part D prescription drug plan, which gave the drug industry billions of dollars in profits by prohibiting the federal government from bargaining for cheaper prescription drugs, added hundreds of billions to the deficit.

But Democrats, who once condemned GOP deficit spending, now control both houses of Congress and are breaking all records for spending. Motivated, at least in part, by an expression repeated by several Obama administration officials that "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste," Democrats are using the financial crisis and economic downturn as an excuse to lift all restraint on spending money that the government does not have.

For a while, they got away with it. Americans were frightened at the prospect of an economic collapse and there was popular support for helping Detroit automakers, if not Wall Street investment bankers. But now that the economy has largely stabilized, people are questioning the nearly unimaginable costs of Obama's and congressional Democrats' progressive agendas.

Last week, it was reported that the cumulative national debt was nearly $12 trillion. With the huge spending programs approved in recent months, the national debt is projected to grow by another $9 trillion over the next decade. And the costs of health care reform and a cap-and-trade climate bill have yet to be included.

Obama and some Democrats pay lip service to reducing the deficit — someday. But the latest polls show Americans increasingly troubled by Washington's spending free-for-all.

The time is right for Perot II.