That Federal Deficit, why it grows and what it means

The Wall St Journal and Fox News have been complaining about the federal deficit and debt this week.  They condemn both and let it go at that.  They never talk about fixes.  There are two fixes, both of them painful.  We could reduce federal spending or we could raise federal taxes, or both.  Do enough of this and the deficit goes away.  However any attempt to reduce spending will provoke howls of pain from those whose federal gravy train has been cut off.  Hiking taxes produces screams from taxpayers.  No congresscritter has the stones to brave either one, so nothing happens. 
   So, the feds continue to spend more than they take in from taxes.  How do they do this? Simple, they print more money and use it to pay the bills and meet payroll.  They do this every year, to the tune of trillions of new paper dollars.  And this works in a way.  Printing trillions of dollars makes the dollar worth less. 
  In my life time I have seen gasoline go from 28 cents a gallon to $2.80 a gallon.  New cars used to be $2000, now they are $20,000.  Comic books used to 10 cents.  Now they are $2.50.  In short, prices of everything are ten times what they were in my childhood.  Or put it another way, the US dollar is worth only a tenth of what it used to be worth.  This is a concealed tax on everyone  Over a lifetime, 90% of all the money everyone holds is sucked out by the feds. 
  How long can this go on?   Who knows?  We put up with a ten times devaluation of the dollar, we can probably put up with a lot more.