Let's take stock of where the United States is going.

The nation has a $1.4 trillion deficit and is $13 trillion in debt. Retirement security for millions of Americans is in jeopardy. The new health care law slashes Medicare by $500 billion over 10 years, destroys the traditional doctor-patient relationship and imposes new taxes. Continuing illegal immigration takes jobs from unemployed Americans, and the illegals take from strained taxpayer services ranging from health care to education.

If the United States was a private company that was jeopardizing its employees due to mismanagement, fraud and manipulating the books, every member of Congress would be screaming bloody murder and the congressional mantra would be, "Throw management in jail."

The good news is that growing numbers of Americans are becoming more educated about what is going on (and not going on) in Washington. The Tea Party movement is helping in this process. People are realizing that local, state and federal governments are running out of money, yet they continue to tax and spend -- and, in the process, our freedoms are being eroded.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., actually had the gall to tell a Christian Science Monitor breakfast that voter attacks against Washington are hypocritical. He said, "those who condemn spending want to keep their Social Security and Medicare benefits and want a big government role in the Gulf oil disaster recovery. There's a huge contradiction on a daily basis."

What an elitist liberal attitude. He's saying "it's the voters, not the managers" who are at fault!

Even some worried Democrats (but not the Democrat congressional leadership or the Obama administration) are joining Republicans and conservatives in calling for the reduction of spending and debt. Yet congressional Democrat leaders still want a new "stimulus" spending bill and new taxes.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is one of the most articulate economic conservatives to recently emerge on the national scene. His "Roadmap" strategy -- under-reported by the mainstream media -- emphasizes that the truly needy need to be taken care of by government but middle-class entitlements must be reduced for the simple reason that there's no money in the treasury for them.

Ryan and Republicans argue that the new health care bill is a prime example -- it fosters higher health care costs and new taxes. In this regard, conservative scholar William Voegeli has written a biting critique of what he calls the Hundred Years War between the party of "more" and the party of "less." He argues that voters will never fully eradicate the welfare state because they don't want to, but that a worried electorate can pressure their representatives to reject the sort of middle- and upper-class entitlements that are bankrupting the country.

Conservatives have long and rightly argued that governments do not generate wealth. They only distribute it. Jonah Goldberg in National Review writes that the challenge for both liberals and conservatives is simply to define how much distribution is "enough." Goldberg asks: "What would an acceptable safety net look like? Who would be taken care of by taxpayers and for how long?" Rep. Ryan offers answers to those questions in his brilliant "Roadmap," but ideologically driven liberals don't. They simply scoff at conservative caution. Leading liberals maintain there's no such thing as enough -- a position obviously shared by President Barack Obama.

It has been said before, but bears repeating: The 2010 congressional races are shaping up to be the most important elections since The Great Depression. Will the Democrats be allowed to continue controlling the Congress and proceed to expand government, the deficit and the debt? Or will the voters elect a Republican majority pledging to put the brakes on President Obama's policies and the dismantling of the private enterprise system? (And will Republicans keep their word this time?)

The 2010 elections and the 2012 presidential election will decide which historic and crucial path America will take. Will we soon become a country like the debt-ridden European Union whose standing in the world continues to weaken? Will we continue to see an America whose allies don't trust us and our enemies no longer fear us? Or will we take the path whereby our managers reinstitute fiscal sanity and enhance our homeland and border security?

There is such a thing as "enough." The voters who are mocked by the likes of Senator John Kerry must send that message loud and clear.

J.C. Watts (JCWatts01@jcwatts.com) is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002.