"We're not spreading doom and gloom. We're spreading an alarm ..."

So said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, when the coalition brought its Fiscal Wake-Up Tour to Maine this week to alert residents to the dangers of growing federal-budget deficits and burgeoning government debt.

The Wake-Up Tour made an official stop in Kennebunkport after an informal meeting with editorial writers for the MaineToday Media newspapers. Both meetings featured enough doom and gloom to alarm anyone who has the slightest concern about out-of-control government spending.

The Concord Coalition is a nonpartisan organization founded in 1992 by the late Sen. Paul Tsongas, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and former Republican Sen. Warren Rudman, of New Hampshire.

According to its Web site, the coalition "is dedicated to educating the public about the causes and consequences of federal budget deficits, the long-term challenges facing America's unsustainable entitlement programs, and how to build a sound economy for future generations."

The word "unsustainable" came up more than once during the coalition's Maine presentations on Tuesday.

Bixby used it to describe United States' fiscal policy, which he said is mired in a dangerous cycle of spending and borrowing.

The coalition's meeting in Kennebunkport was moderated by Maine Sen. Susan Collins and featured a panel of experts that included Bixby, Stuart Butler of The Heritage Foundation and Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute.

Bixby talked about the need to rein in the government's "big three" entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- which he said consume about 42 percent of the federal budget. He said spending on Social Security and Medicare, especially, will become an even bigger problem in the next few years as more and more baby boomers become eligible for benefits.

Butler said the country faces a "tsunami wave of entitlement spending" that could lead to marginal federal income tax rates of "well over 70 percent" if taxes are raised to accommodate unrestrained growth of the programs. If taxes aren't increased, he said, the alternative will be "staggering deficits."

As if the current and projected deficits weren't staggering in their own right. On the very day that the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour sounded the alarm in Maine, the government announced that budget deficits over the next 10 years are expected to total $9 trillion.

Now there's some doom and gloom to think about.

Marshall, describing himself as "the prophet of pain" warned that the nation's debt burden will make it increasingly difficult for the government to solve problems and said the country is facing a "perfect storm of inertia" in dealing with the deficits.

"I'm not a conspiracy theorist," he said, "but there is a bipartisan plot to bankrupt America," he said.

Democrats only want to tax the rich and they refuse to cut spending, Butler said, and Republicans refuse to raise taxes to pay for anything.

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem.

Collins and the Wake-Up Tour speakers emphasized the need for "nonpartisan" solutions but the senator knows firsthand how difficult it is to persuade members of Congress to participate in bipartisan activity, much less engage in nonpartisan problem-solving.

And what could possibly lead us to believe that Congress would make a serious effort to control existing entitlement programs when its top priority at the moment is health-care reform -- a project that is likely to create the biggest and most explosively expensive entitlement program in the nation's history?

And then there's the other element in this "perfect storm of inertia:" the American people.

We have seen the enemy, as the saying goes, and it is us.

Coalition members said they've been encouraged by the recent town hall meetings about health care and what appears to be the awakening of many Americans to the dangers of unbridled government spending. And it's true: Concern about big government has been a recurring theme of the health-care meetings.

But we've also heard Medicare recipients at those meetings who are angry because they fear that President Barack Obama will cut Medicare benefits to help pay for expanded health care elsewhere.

There's a reason that Congress and a string of presidents have consistently avoided the challenge of trying to control the cost of entitlement programs: the people who participate in the programs throw a fit when they believe their benefits are being threatened.

One solution being promoted by the Concord Coalition is creation of a nonpartisan commission to recommend solutions for the nation's debt problems. The process would be similar to that employed in the closing of military bases around the country in recent years.

It might work. It's certainly worth trying. If we don't do something soon, one of the Wake-Up Tour experts said, that tsunami wave of spending they were talking about "could swamp our ship of state."

Not that we're spreading doom and gloom, of course.